let the wind carry you home (you'll find your way back someday)
by exordia
Summary: Furihata journeys to another world to save his own. / slow-build akafuri fantasy au. birthday fic for jynxiii.
1. Chapter 1

a/n: super late gift fic for **jynxiii. **(slow build akafuri fantasy au. akashi isn't in the first chapter, but he will be in the next. probably.) this fic will be updated every other day or so. apologies for mistakes and the characterization, haha.

* * *

**let the wind carry you home.**

(Furihata journeys to another world to save his own.)

* * *

The sunlight is a thread through the spaces between Furihata's fingers, reaching the boy's face as piercing rays that coil around his entirety and act as a second gravity. Furihata does not resist the call of the brilliance overhead, blinding and scorching as it may be, and raises his hand to filter the light that makes the spots behind his eyelids dance.

But beyond the sun is a far greater enigma: Furihata has been fascinated by the endlessness of the sky ever since he picked up his father's Plexiglas digital book, and he knows that the wide expanse of ever-changing palettes is merely a blanket to another world. Every time he gets on his LSA, he has to fight the urge to plunge into the only gateway to that other realm; there is a large opening in the center of the sky, surrounded by cascading clouds and empty with nothing but darkness. Call it a blind spot, a form of absolute black—it is the only thing that the human eye is completely incapable of discerning, all because there is nothing to see.

Limits of visual perception be damned, there _is_ something out there. What that something is, Furihata has absolutely no inkling of. If only he could get close enough…

The symbols on the primary flight display begin to flicker haphazardly as a particularly strong turbulence—one that isn't caused by clouds and converging bodies of air—wracks through the plane's interior.

"[_bzzt_] _- Goddamn it, Furihata! At your altitude I don't think it's a good idea to let your hands wander from the wheel, so you better focus before you end up crashing into the ocean and making me pay for the damage—"_ The voice from the aviation radio furiously reverberates in the walls of the cockpit and jerks Furihata from his stupor. Furihata accidentally thrusts the center lever.

After lowering his altitude and regaining his momentum with quickened breaths, Furihata mutters, "R-right, right. How did you—I mean, I wasn't daydreaming or anything."

There's static before the voice lazily drawls out, "_You were heading for the Aperture. Need I say more?_"

Furihata shifts in his seat. "…What a hasty generalization," he finally says, staring at the indicator and wincing at how close he had come to losing his plane.

"_You would've died,"_ the voice replies curtly. "_Remember that._"

"I do. I'm coming down in a few minutes."

The person on the other end sighs in resignation. "_Fine. I'd rather you get off that plane than add to the long list of funerals I've attended._"

Furihata nervously laughs. He briefly withdraws his hand from the wheel and wipes the sweat off of his palm.

.

**Part One**

**CHAOS**

**.**

"How many times have I told you _never_ to let the Aperture distract you?" Hyuuga, the air traffic controller assigned to the district, lets out a barrage of reprimands upon Furihata's entrance into the tower. Furihata develops a new interest in his boots as Hyuuga scrutinizes his flushed face.

"I'm sorry—it's just that—"

Hyuuga waves him off and goes back to his seat. "I've had enough of excuses with that punchline. Go drink a glass of water and talk to me when you've recovered."

Furihata shakes his head, not wanting to disappoint his friend any further. His fists are trembling inside his pockets. "I'm fine."

Furrowing his eyebrows, Hyuuga counters, "Nobody who goes near the damned hole is fine afterwards. Down the water, then I'll be at least convinced that you're not going to faint anytime soon. That's an order."

Furihata obeys and immediately returns, the reddening on his cheeks and neck gradually disappearing under the cold weight of the room. The seat makes a barely audible squeak when Furihata settles on it. He can see Hyuuga's expression very well—after all, he's had his fair share of witnessing deaths caused by engine failures and, ultimately, unquenchable curiosity about the void that lies above them.

Hyuuga's just doing his job. The repercussions of applying for the position are beginning to wear Hyuuga out; although Hyuuga's only in his early twenties, he already has a few lines on his forehead, probably from worrying too much.

Sometimes Furihata feels sorry for him, but then every occupation has drawbacks. Hyuuga just happened to pick one with a free ticket to a never-ending viewing of talented pilots falling from the sky.

When he thinks about it, though, Hyuuga has gone numb from all of the casualties he's had to count.

"I'm not numb," Hyuuga spits, offended. Once he realizes that he thought out loud, Furihata digs crescent shapes into his palms and bites his lip. "Repeatedly encountering death doesn't mean that you get used to it."

"I'm sorry," Furihata repeats, his head still hanging low.

Hyuuga turns to him and slaps the side of his head. "You look like a miserable idiot. Stop apologizing; at least you're safe now."

"I'm probably grounded, though. Literally," Furihata says thoughtfully.

He gets a scoff as an answer. "What do you mean by 'probably'? You're definitely grounded." Hyuuga goes on about him running off and looking for a job that won't get him blasted to dust, but all Furihata can hear is the lull of Hyuuga's sentiments that make him the brother that Furihata never had. "Okay, what is it _now_? Are you actually still listening to me?"

Furihata blinks. "Uh, yeah, I am." When Hyuuga narrows his eyes at him, he adds, with his hands flailing, "And. Um. Thank you, Hyuuga-kun."

"For saving your ass? No problem," Hyuuga easily replies.

"No, no…just, thanks. For being there. I was really tempted to go into the Aperture…"

"Believe me, you're not the only one. That doesn't justify anything, though—"

"But don't you ever wonder what's out there?" Furihata blurts, the marks on his palm still visible but only superficial. He was only about fifty kilometers away from the fissure, and even then, it was apparent that it was there just because.

_Still._ There always has to be a reason other than the effect itself. Furihata could use one of the arguments that his mathematics-loving classmate in college used to spout: there is no such thing as one that produces the existence of itself. It's an illogical infinity. The way his classmate explained it in layman's terms involved a phrase that sounded a bit like 'a dog chasing its tail', and thankfully Furihata had enough skills in comprehension to catch up.

Hyuuga purses his lips for a moment, as if in hesitation, before saying, "I always do. _All_ of us do. Do you think nobody lifts their head and stares at the Aperture while walking down the street? Nobody looks out their window at night and fears that one day the hole's going to swallow us whole? I think our minds are going to be the banes of our existence someday. Too many damn questions. I never wonder why there're so many insomniacs in this era."

"I remember you tracing the blame back to the chemists—was it something about experimenting with variations of LSD?"

Hyuuga relaxes and lights up when memories of their teenage years resurface. "Ah, that one hypothesis about hallucinations, and how the Aperture is just one fat illusion? Hm, that was a great one."

Trading his smile for a more serious expression, Furihata says, "See, all we had were assumptions. I want to _know,_ not just guess."

"And _that_ is why you're going to die early," Hyuuga retorts. "You have to make sacrifices to know. Do you really want to go that far and risk everything just so you can discover why it's there? You do realize that you can't say, _doesn't hurt to try,_ don't you?"

"It's already painful not knowing," Furihata quietly chuckles.

Hyuuga reclines in his seat and crosses his arms, his gaze firm and expectant. "Answer me honestly, Furihata. Would you give anything just to satisfy your inquisitiveness?"

They share silence for a while, until Furihata exhales and decides that he's going to tell Hyuuga the answer that he wants to hear. For all Hyuuga has done for him, he deserves this much peace of mind.

He'll lie. Just this time.

.

.

Usually, Furihata uses his hoverboard during the winter, when the roads are slippery beyond imagination and the tragedies of his helpless feet increase tenfold. His board is the oldest model, one he had salvaged from a junk shop beside a laundromat. Furihata was fascinated by the board's simple design—there were lines that ran like schematic symbols and, when the board was activated, glowed cyan in the darkness. The board was to his liking, as opposed to the flashy ones that people of his generation obsessed over.

This summer, however, Furihata takes his board out of its compartment and brings it with him as he walks along the thoroughfare that leads to the freeway and a narrow road to a dead end. He has a feeling that he would need it sooner or later.

Hyuuga was right about the passersby; Furihata can't help but glance at the people and the AIs who walk or float alongside him, staring at the uncanny Aperture if not at the streetlights or their watches. They're not as concerned as he is, seeming to have accepted the reality that there is a void in the sky that can never be filled.

Another thing that perplexes Furihata is the fact that he hasn't seen any toddlers for a while. The youngest children he has seen recently appear to be at least six years old; he doesn't know if there's a law prohibiting infants and nursery-age kids from going outside, but something is definitely off about their absence.

When the pedestrian sign lights up, Furihata cautiously pads across the lane with a canvas backpack strewn over his shoulders and his board by his side. Save for the footsteps that pound on the thinning asphalt and the wind that sifts through the pedestrians' clothes, the city is quiet, almost asleep in the way its people whisper and proceed without so much as conversations about the latest earthquake and typhoon warnings. After all, their tablets do that for them; some of the keen gossipers only raise eyebrows at new post notifications on their fiberglass gizmos.

It takes him quite a few turns around corners before Furihata finds himself in front of the city archives. Last week, he saw an online job posting, and he was astounded to know that the administrator had included a very handsome salary in the description. Furihata figures that it's payment for hours of uneventful filing and sorting of catalog cards. The catalog exists to this day due to some people's mistrust in what should be an infallible digital system. The point remains—who _would_ want to work in the library, anyway?

Apparently, the reason why the administrator chose to use the salary as the job's point of attraction is the absence of anyone to even do a single task in the archives. Furihata enters the pristine building whose windows are replaced by thin glass displays of ebooks and newspaper headlines. His breaths echo in the large, dark lobby, and he only sees a sign above the counter:

NO APPLICATIONS NEEDED. GRAB THE MICROCHIP ON THE FIRST COFFEE TABLE, AND YOUR EMPLOYMENT IS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

It's a sketchy invitation—the library is practically abandoned, and Furihata muses about the possibility of the posting as one created by a user looking for someone to pass his frustrations to.

Kids nowadays. They find every reason to defy cyber-ethics.

Nevertheless, the glint of the microchip catches his eye from the table right beside the counter. It's barely visible, but the sunlight has shone exactly on it. Furihata takes some steps towards it, trying to ignore the shivers that run through his spine due to the eerie silence.

He halts midway, swallowing at the blurry image of tall shelves. There's a humming noise beyond what he can see. Some people say that when you leave a house, there are still sounds left bouncing off of furniture and doors. Maybe the concept applies to archives.

Furihata makes a dash for the microchip. He misses it at first, his palm sliding across the cold glass tabletop; when he does retrieve it, he holds the small, steel-like chip between his fingers and holds it under the light.

Funny. It doesn't look like a regular microchip at all.

It's not a microchip, he realizes, when it hums and develops fiber protrusions that fasten on his index finger. Furihata screams, slipping on his feet and pulling the device from his finger. It won't budge.

The moment the device glows, the lights in the library mysteriously turn on by themselves, and all of the Plexiglas digital books buzz into life. Furihata lets out a whimper, turns around on his front, and scrabbles across the floor for the entrance. While dragging himself to the door, he uses one hand to pinch his cheek. He yelps, "_Ow—_oh, forget it!"

Furihata is just an inch away from escape when a male voice laughs, starting a chain of chuckles from an audience that Furihata is yet to see. Furihata squeezes his eyes shut. _Pleaseletthisbeadreampleaseletthisbeadream—_

"Look, he's scared of us. I told you that this initiation was too creepy!"

"Shh, you got a good laugh out of it, anyway. Poor guy, he's probably traumatized by books by now. Do people have phobias of archives, Izuki-kun?"

"Mm, maybe."

"Thank gods you can't come up with any retorts right now."

"Stop it," a woman barks out, effectively shutting up her comrades. Furihata's crouched on the corner with his head buried in the nest between his knees and enveloped by shaking arms. Someone approaches him. Furihata doesn't dare to look.

A light hand taps his head, and Furihata forces a cry down his throat. "Are you okay?" the same female voice asks. There's a shuffle of feet, and Furihata realizes that the woman is kneeling before him. "Okay, you're not. But trust me, we won't harm you."

Furihata shakes his head while it's still wedged between his knees.

The woman sighs. "I guess that this procedure isn't going to work." Furihata unmistakably hears cracking knuckles before he's hauled up from his position and slammed to the wall, a hand fisting his collar. It knocks the wind out of him, and his hands reflexively grasp the wrist that's keeping him plastered in his position.

Furihata blinks at a brunette, seeming to be in her early-twenties. She's relatively petite, without curves whatsoever—typical of the girls Furihata's dated himself, although the woman makes up for her lack of defining features with her fierce expression. The first thought that comes to mind is the prospect of setting this woman up in a date with Hyuuga. The poor man has never had any success in his romantic life, anyway. They'd be great at looking furious together.

The brunette doesn't particularly appear as an aggressor, but her firm hold on Furihata signifies otherwise. She looks at him contemplatively, probably surprised by the pallor of his lips.

"So," she says sternly, "I'll begin again. Are you okay?"

"This is crazy," Furihata breathes out, struggling to remove the hand from his collar.

A male walking towards them giggles. "Punch him in the face, Riko. Maybe that'll knock some sense into him, teach him to answer the right questions."

The woman—Riko—frowns and eyes Furihata closely. "Why are you here?"

"To apply for a job," his reply comes quickly, clipped and straight to the point in fear of saying something wrong. Riko nods and loosens her grip on him.

Riko inquires further. "How did you find out about it?"

"The website. Heavily encrypted. Found the basic algorithm."

"Whoa, kid," a pale-skinned man grins at him. "You an IT major or a hacker? There wasn't any key."

Furihata returns the smile nervously. "No, I just looked up some algorithms and played with them. They're all over the net."

"True," another guy says. His spiked hair is outrageous, Furihata thinks.

Using her free hand to make a silencing gesture, Riko turns back to Furihata and says, "You want to work in the archives, from what I understand."

"I…Am I supposed to say something else?" Furihata offers, but takes it back when Riko shoves him. "Yes, I want to apply for a position. But I don't see the administrator or any of his assistants…"

He's met with questioning stares, and he instinctively gulps.

Finally, Riko lets him go, dusting off her palms while listening to Furihata's sharp intakes of breath. She crosses her arms and briefly cocks her head to the side, motioning for her companions to step forward. Now that they're all lined up, Furihata recognizes them—he doesn't know what memory he has of them, but he's certain that he's seen their faces before.

"You're right in front of them," Riko says, a hint of satisfaction tugging at the corners of her lips. Baffled, Furihata looks to her for elaboration. "Welcome to our HQ, although I'm frankly surprised that no one has found us yet. This is what happens when dumbasses choose to let the Net consume them and forget what a library is for."

Another brunet—a fox-eyed male—clears his throat and holds his hand out. "I'm Koganei Shinji," he greets him. Furihata's fear falters and he quickly responds with a bow. "Oh, and before I forget, this is Mitobe Rinnosuke," Koganei points to the bushy-browed male right beside him, who continues to stare at Furihata wordlessly.

Upon seeing Furihata's question written all over his features, Koganei adds, "He's simply taciturn. Don't worry, he can speak."

"Izuki Shun," a raven-haired guy throws in and waves his hand. He elbows the other guy with the spiky mane, who coughs, "Fukuda Hiroshi. Nice to meet you."

Riko smiles, all predatory teeth and perfunctory courtesy masking her ferocity. "You've probably already guessed, unless you're as thick as the bark of a giant redwood." Furihata shoots her a confused look, and she amends, "The redwood's been extinct for a millennium, sorry. Anyway, I'm Riko Aida, ex-pilot, fugitive—although in my defense I'm not guilty of running away from any detainment, assuming that I've actually committed a crime—and undercover researcher of the crux behind the Aperture."

She steps away and lifts her chin. "You're Furihata Kouki—the curious pilot who ran too close to the Aperture yet didn't 'die'. A miracle, I'd say, but we all know that there are no miracles in this world."

Furihata can feel the bile rising up his esophagus. "How…"

"You want to find a job, but your ulterior motive is to look into pre-existing and hidden records about the Aperture," Riko says, pride lacing her voice. "This is why you're part of us now, Furihata. We need you. And you need us."

"Who are _you_ people?" Furihata sputters in an accusatory tone.

Koganei bestows him a cheeky smile. "We _are_ the Administrators."

.

.

Furihata's first day at his job begins spectacularly with a sit-down, a stress ball, and a cup of chamomile tea. He's well aware that chamomile is just short for 'Good luck, you dumb consumers—you're drinking something that's concocted from recycled debris. Chamomile doesn't exist, idiots'. Regardless of the ingredients, Furihata is just relieved that all he tastes is water.

"Tell us more about you, Furihata-kun," Izuki says, crossing his hands under his chin. His eyes are calculating.

It takes Furihata every shrapnel of his remaining audacity to say something in return. The liquid in the cup forms torrents as Furihata's fingers shake. "I-um, I think you know everything there is to know about."

"You're 17, right?" Fukuda asks, shaking his head in amazement. "Well, you're turning 18 in three months, but still. You're pretty young to be here. It also says in the files that you dropped out of high school, but it doesn't state the reasons why, unless I haven't read them yet…"

Furihata nearly chokes while sipping the tea and is grateful when it doesn't come out of his nose. "Ah, well. Financial issues."

Koganei peers over Fukuda's shoulder to take a look at the document. Fukuda opens his mouth and taps on the entry that he's been searching for. "Because you're—"

"Orphaned," Furihata replies automatically, unbothered by the weight that his answer carries. He's been asked this question for years, and it doesn't hurt any less; in fact, the pity just seems to grow exponentially.

There's a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up to see that Mitobe has walked over to his seat and offered him his condolences. Koganei nods. "It says here that you don't have any providers, but I suppose that we should change that according to what you just said."

It's different—Furihata has never heard this response before, and the absence of the word 'sorry' in the sentence is a moment of deafness on Furihata's part. It should have been offending—it should have come off as cold, unthoughtful, inconsiderate—but all that registers in his mind is comfort. Something tells him that he has the emotional intelligence of a rock, but Furihata finds solace in the fact that false sympathy does not linger here.

It is Izuki who wrenches him out of his haze. "How is Suzume?"

His sister's name is almost synonymous with sadness. "She's…fine. Quiet."

Izuki looks at him fondly. "Does she feel guilty for being the only one who's able to go to school?"

Furihata laughs, the sound warbled and ugly when it comes out. "Sometimes she doesn't want to put her uniform on, saying she'd rather take care of the house while I'm out there making ends meet."

Before they can delve further into Furihata's personal life, Riko arrives with a stack of papers, which she drops on the table without warning. She announces, "I haven't informed you yet of the specifics. We should start off with a brief summary of what we've unearthed in previous studies. There isn't much, but a little something is always better than nothing."

"This," Riko points to the first set of papers, "is comprised of our first-hand experiences with the Aperture. The second set is what we've salvaged from old records, but it doesn't really make sense if you don't read into the third set, which is the history of mankind, all the way back to the Neanderthals."

"But if you prefer to listen to the audiobook version," Izuki says, earning a blow to his head from Riko, "I'd be happy to help you. Everything I'm going to tell you is just basic stuff, though."

Furihata, still processing the information, just nods.

Mitobe hands Koganei and Fukuda some of the papers from the second and the third sets. Koganei begins by exclaiming, "Hey, why do you always give me the most convoluted sections?"

"Take it as a compliment if you wish," Fukuda chuckles. Koganei sinks back to his seat and grumbles before perking up again and initiating the discussion.

"Okay," Koganei says, cracking his neck as he skims over the text. "This one's about the hypothesis of there being another world behind the Aperture, which we clearly do not know anything about since—"

Furihata blurts, "I knew it!" The other Administrators stare at him until he apologizes for the unnecessary interjection.

Setting down the papers on the table, Koganei continues. "Resuming the statement—there _is_ a world beyond the Aperture. It may be a parallel of ours, but from what we've found so far, humans in the past used to worship deities. They believed that these deities watched over them, blessed them, something along those lines. There's a concept of 'heaven', in which these divine beings resided. No human could ever go to that place unless he or she—" Fukuda raises his eyebrow at him—"or they, whatever pronoun you want to use, died.

"But there was a huge Humanist revolution that occurred two millennia ago. Some people were convinced that humans were perfect, and they didn't need any supreme deities to guide them. Basically, it's a tradition that has long been forgotten. People wonder about the Aperture because they don't remember about the ones who live in the world that it veils."

Riko augments the information. "That's not the end of the story—it's just one guess. Even before, there was no way to prove that these deities existed. Let's just say that this is one of the weaker hypotheses that we have."

_It's too much,_ Furihata wants to say. The overload makes him slightly dizzy.

"However, we found a much more interesting artifact," Fukuda says. "They used to call it a 'diary', but we know it today as a dataform. We're pretty convinced that the narrator's an adolescent."

"What does it tell you?" asks Furihata, basking in the knowledge that he didn't even know existed.

"It talks about the 'balance of the worlds'. Imagine us being on a scale. The narrator says that we live in the 'Lower World'—it's the realm where only humans and AIs exist. Technically we're the only species alive. Then there's the 'Upper World' _above_ the Aperture. No one knows who or what resides there. Currently, the Lower World has a population of 11,111,111,111. The dataform—ah, I mean the 'diary' says that whatever number of people we have is the same for whatever number of organisms, human or anything else, there is in the Upper World."

Furihata leans closer to Fukuda, who rests his cheek on his palm. "You said something about the balance of the worlds. If, just if, the number's not the same for both worlds, would something happen?"

"Good question. The narrator says that it's the only time the Aperture actually 'opens'. The imbalance rarely takes place, maybe once in every fifty centuries—which is appropriate since the government has recently revealed that nobody is being born anymore, and I'd say that's pretty late of them to announce it considering the fact that women have stopped giving birth nine years ago. Whoever has the higher number has to offer up as many as it takes to reinstate the equilibrium. For example, if the count is 500 in the Upper World and 502 in Lower World, then someone from the Lower World must enter through the Aperture."

Fukuda actually runs out of breath after the explanation; he threads his fingers through his hair, ruffles it a bit, and smoothens it back into place. He doesn't bat an eye when Furihata slumps to the table, looking exhausted himself. No births at all? Equilibrium? Sacrifice?

The words swim around Furihata's head in an unintelligible tangle.

He remembers how he walks around the city all day without there being a single sight of children younger than six years old on the streets.

The Administrators leave him to his contemplation of the issue at hand for as long as he likes, provided that he internalize the facts and ask the one thing that's been left unknown to him. As expected, Furihata springs back up and bursts out, "W-wait."

He stands up and says, "Wait, _waitwaitwait._ There's something that doesn't make sense here." He turns to Fukuda with wide eyes. "You said that the opening of the Aperture is approximately a one in a zillion chance, right? That it doesn't happen very often, that the odds are exceedingly slim?"

"Something like that; although it's not verbatim, it's probably close to that," Fukuda mumbles.

Furihata fervently nods. "Okay. Alright. The diary sounds wrong—unless you're not telling me something or I just completely zoomed past the point and missed the mark—because there's no way the Aperture rarely opens. What about those who _die_? I mean, there's the talk of ghosts and souls being tied to the ground, but the Aperture _has_ to open every once in a while."

"There's no question that we haven't proven the reliability of the entry." Riko has a knowing smile. Furihata must be close to the answer he's looking for. "But yes, we haven't covered everything. What's missing is crucial in validating the narrator's claims."

"_If_ people die, there must be a constant imbalance," Izuki offers solemnly. "But why doesn't the Aperture open frequently?"

Stumped, Furihata stares at his feet—one mannerism he's acquired recently. He whispers, "Are you insinuating something…?"

"Look at us, Furihata," Riko softly says, meeting Furihata's gaze when he listens to her. However mellow her voice is, the strength of her eyes compensates for it. "I _know_ you recognize us. We were all ex-pilots. Now we're fugitives, forced to hide in an abandoned library."

Furihata's chest constricts. It's all so vivid: Koganei's grin, Mitobe's small smile, Izuki's stunning smirk, Fukuda's uncertain show of teeth, and Riko's pursed lips. As he scans around the room for their attentive faces, Furihata sees frames around their heads, names on the bottom, and gleaming badges scarcely shown in the commemorative self-portraits. He sees the steel walls, the flickering buttons, the swiveling chair, the radios, Hyuuga's hunched posture as he furiously pounds on the desk, watching another plane go down in his screen…

"No," Furihata covers his disbelief with a chuckle. His voice cracks. "No, _no_. You've got to be kidding me."

Mitobe is the first one to react to the shuffle of feet coming from outside, but Riko waves him off. "Furihata-kun, we can't explain it really well, but whatever you're thinking of is probably the answer to your own question."

"But it's not possible—"

"As such," Riko cuts him off, "the two other Administrators, whom we haven't introduced yet, are going to provide the clarification. I think it's best for you to sit down."

"But—"

Riko glares at him this time. "Sit. Down."

Furihata doesn't waste a single second to quietly obey the more threatening side of Riko. He takes a seat and squirms uncomfortably at the sound of murmurs and footsteps closing in on them. The sliding doors screech as they lend passage to the newcomers. The men are dressed in the same dark clothes that the other Administrators have.

Furihata's mouth dries as he realizes all of the lies that have always been surrounding him.

The taller of the two Administrators waves at Furihata, and his the corners of his eyes wrinkle as he smiles. "I'm Kiyoshi Teppei, and you already know who this is," he wraps an arm around the other man playfully, who grunts and shrugs him off in response. When Kiyoshi doesn't refrain from his attempts to provoke his friend further, the man shoves him away and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, huffing.

"You know who I am, but here it is," he says, frowning and possibly increasing the number of lines on his forehead. Furihata tastes something vile on his tongue.

"I'm Hyuuga Junpei. I'm the Head Administrator."

.

.

Furihata has never really gone to the outskirts before; the train services don't extend beyond the metropolises, and there are virtually no records about what is out there. During his childhood, he's heard stories of rust-colored soil—not that he knows what rust is, gods know that it hasn't been around for ages—and radioactive dust in what's fabled to be a barren wasteland.

Naturally, Hyuuga tells him to get into the car and keep his mouth zipped for the rest of the ride.

The journey to the 'small village', as Hyuuga calls it, is silent and bumpy. The rough terrain jolts the car every once in a while, and Hyuuga spits a string of curses when his head hits the ceiling. Furihata looks out the window, trying to even his breaths and stifle his anger.

It takes them precisely sixty six minutes to reach their destination, all thanks to their placement in the far north of the Lower World. If they had been in the center, they would've had to travel for about a week. Hyuuga parks in front of a deserted lot, which he claims is a 'playground'. Furihata wrinkles his nose—aren't playgrounds supposed to be domes with anti-gravity properties and harmless laser guns?

Hyuuga strides towards a silly-looking contraption with suspended seats anchored by chains. "Go on, sit," he says in a strained voice, and as betrayed as Furihata feels, he can't help but oblige. The metal seat is cool even through his jeans.

Furihata squeaks when Hyuuga pushes him and instinctively holds on to the chains. There's a hollow, screeching sound when the seat moves.

"This is a swing," Hyuuga murmurs, gently pressing forward on Furihata's back when he returns to his original position. "It's been gone for over two centuries. I wanted to show you this five years ago."

Biting his lip, Furihata digs his heels on the ground to still the swing. "Were you ever going to tell me about everything?"

Hyuuga sighs, sitting on the adjacent swing and clasping his hands on his legs. "You're like my little brother. It was too dangerous to let you know."

"I know I'm an idiot," Furihata murmurs, "but I wish that you didn't keep me in the dark. I trusted you, Hyuuga-kun."

"I…I understand." Hyuuga straightens up in the swing and says, "I'm surprised by how well you took it, though."

Furihata shakes his head. "I sincerely want to punch your face right now, but all that would guarantee me is a broken fist and your revenge. Weighing the consequences, I don't think I'll be able to gain much."

The wind is gentle but cold, piercing, unforgiving—a violent shudder runs through Furihata's skin and tickles it with goose bumps, the same way Hyuuga genuinely laughs and stirs familial bliss within Furihata. He could never hate Hyuuga, but that isn't equivalent to understanding his decisions all the time. It's too much to ask Hyuuga to pretend to be the brother who's on the lookout for danger, but it seems that Furihata doesn't even need to ask.

Hyuuga clears his throat and begins by telling him, "I was young and curious, knew that there was something out there even if everybody told me otherwise. I was assigned to the tower, and I met the others. We had a plan—I was to remain and monitor the traffic, while the others were going to test the boundaries and scan the Aperture."

"They crashed," Furihata supplies, having guessed the turnout of the events already.

"Yes, they crashed. I was screaming at the radio and telling them to say something, to come back," Hyuuga says wistfully. "It was fucking traumatizing—having to hear the explosions over a transmitter. Kiyoshi was calling in for help, and Koganei was screaming. There was nothing I could do."

After heaving, Hyuuga continues, "The authorities told me that their bodies couldn't be found. There was a funeral, and I was required to make a speech. All I said was that it was my fault."

"But it wasn't," Furihata whispers. "It was never your fault, Hyuuga-kun."

"That doesn't change anything," Hyuuga gives him a wry smile. "I was ready to quit working in the tower. The days were both long and short—I dreaded the nights because of the terrors, but at the same time it took forever for the sun to disappear. One day, I packed up and decided I was going to travel outside the city limits. Needed to lose myself for a while, so I can find who I am again."

The sound of the friction between Furihata's soles and the dirt makes for an awful noise. "And you found this place."

"I found them," Hyuuga interjects, standing up and pointing to the decrepit buildings that surround the playground. "I found all of them—the ones who didn't die when they should have. Riko was crying, begging for a biological basis for their inability to die. Again, I couldn't give her anything she demanded from me."

Hyuuga's chuckle is grievous. "I thought I was going crazy. So I did what I could—I ran away from them, telling them to get the hell away from me. But Riko was a fast runner—won a couple of medals in high school track, if I remember correctly—and knocked me to the ground. She beat me up until I could realize that I wasn't hallucinating. It's funny how I could never forget how the wounds stung, especially since she was crying on top of me."

"Why here?" Furihata asks quietly, knuckles white from his grip on the chains. "Why did they need to hide?"

"You know how it is," the emotion behind Hyuuga's sneer doesn't go unnoticed. "Healthy lifestyle magazines. Retirement plans. Funeral services. Pharmacies. The whole health sector. Food production. Those who make money off of people's fear of death have bargained with the ones who survived."

Furihata shakes his head, seeming to misunderstand. "But _why_?"

Hyuuga murmurs, "I sometimes forget that you're 17 and too young to know how shitty this world is. Basically, the government has a program that keeps humans unaware of the fact that they are essentially immortal, to keep the economy afloat."

"Do you really believe that humans are selfish?"

"Most of them are," Hyuuga replies, the conviction in his voice unwavering. "They don't tell you that you're practically invincible. Why would you tell your enemy that you can't defeat him, anyway?"

"The term 'enemy' might be a little extreme," teases Furihata in hopes that he might lighten the mood.

His small success is evident in Hyuuga's snort. "I was using figurative language, idiot. I would've assumed that you got at least _that_ far."

Furihata holds his hands up. "I got it, I got it. I was kidding, geez."

"It's okay to be angry, Furihata," Hyuuga cocks his head to the side and squints at the grin plastered on Furihata's lips, threatening to fall off any moment now. "I've lied but you can stop doing the same. I hate it the most when you pretend that things are okay, even when they're not."

"You can tell me what you're hiding, too," Furihata shoots back. "There's a reason you decided to tell me now, right? You can't just choose to disclose this big of a discovery at any time you want."

Furihata thinks that he hears Hyuuga swear under his breath, but he isn't sure. Although Hyuuga is still the same person he's known throughout his childhood, things are different now. Circumstances have changed, and he understands that sometimes people have to betray the past to secure the future. Hyuuga appears burnt out. "I was about to tell you that. Do you usually go to the shopping district?"

Clearly, Furihata doesn't know what that has to do with anything. "Sometimes I run errands on the side to cover Suzume's field trip expenses. What about it?"

Hyuuga nods in acknowledgement. "I figured that you didn't own any Plexiglas tablet. Do you listen to the messenger AIs walking aimlessly on the streets? Do you watch the news on the screens?"

"What?"

"Just answer the questions," Hyuuga presses.

Furihata scratches the back of his neck. "Well, yeah, they're right in my face so I couldn't do anything to ignore them. Those earthquake and typhoon warnings have been popping up for almost three months now, and even the AIs keep reminding me of them—"

Hyuuga shakes his head in disbelief. "You should know danger when the signs are there. Do you actually listen to the warnings?"

"Uh…do they mean anything? I don't think the predictors are accurate, because nothing's happened so far."

"_So far,_" Hyuuga sighs, massaging his temples. He tenses up when the bleak wind sweeps through the playground and blows sand into his eyes. Groaning, Hyuuga pats the edges of his eyelids when the wind is gone. "If you can only trust science once, let it be this time. The folks recently developed instruments to foresee earthquakes and typhoons a few months before they actually take place, and the warnings have been broadcasted for three months already. What do you think?"

Furihata sharply breathes. "Are you saying…?"

"An apocalypse is impending," Hyuuga answers, gesturing for Furihata to walk with him towards the car. "This is why I—no, _we_ need your help."

"How exactly am I going to help?" There's an audible tremor in Furihata's voice due to the weight of the responsibility that Hyuuga is placing on his shoulders. He stands up and matches Hyuuga's strides in no time. "I can't stop natural disasters."

"You never learn," Hyuuga mutters. "You _can_ prevent them, if my hypothesis is correct. One of the signs of the Aperture opening is—"

"An apocalypse," Furihata finishes, aghast. He stops in his tracks, heart hammering against his ribcage in absolute terror. It isn't just the disasters that terrify him; the mere thought that he would finally see what lies behind the Aperture after years of staring at it with blind eyes is enough to make him vibrate with anticipation and throw up in dread.

Another thing about the opening of the Aperture troubles him.

_A sacrifice._

Furihata is jerked back into reality when he realizes that Hyuuga is already getting into the car. He runs and holds the door to the driver's seat, preventing Hyuuga from closing it.

Raggedly, he says, "That means that there are two people who died or were born."

"You have to find them," Hyuuga says, frowning at Furihata's hand on the door. "Hospital registries, the census, pregnant mothers…we're taking a chance here. You'll have to go through the current events in the whole of this world."

Furihata's mouth dries. "Hyuuga-kun, I'm trying to ask—I, the second option—"

"What?"

"W…What am I supposed to do when I discover that two people were or will be born? Seeing as it's the more logical option in our situation of…of human _immortality_, I don't think I know what you're trying to make me do." Furihata's trembling, finally discerning the scope of his duty. The world or one person—it seems like an easy choice, but it isn't. It never is. "Do you…do you want me to kill one of them? Do you want me to be a murderer? What if it doesn't work—what if that person ends up not dying?"

Hyuuga clenches his jaw and is about to wrench the door from Furihata's grasp, but he balls his fists in an effort to control himself. "One, we aren't exactly sure that the disasters will be caused by the imbalance between the worlds. Two, we don't know whether the imbalance is borne of death or of birth, in spite of 'dead' people not being exactly dead."

He finally pulls the door until it's only two inches away from the jamb and takes a deep breath. "And _three—_don't ask questions you know the damn answers to."

.

.

"I'm home," Furihata mumbles to himself, toeing off his worn-out running shoes at the doorway and bending over to fix them by the row of slippers nearby. He rubs his eyes wearily and suddenly frowns, the aroma of pickled radish and anchovies (all manufactured from artificial constituents, of course) wafting across the diminutive living room and drifting right into his nares.

Furihata drops his backpack on the couch and strides to the quiescent kitchen, wincing at the fact that he had forgotten to prepare dinner for his sister. He holds his hands up and signs, _Suzume, I'm really sorry, I just—_

Suzume is already sitting and holding her chopsticks. Furihata widens his eyes when Suzume drops her chopsticks and rises to wrap her arms around his waist. She looks up and exclaims with her fingers and bright eyes, _Oh, Nii-san, don't worry about it! I was worried about you, since you came home so late._

_Ah, I just met up with Hyuuga-kun_, Furihata pats her head and sinks down to the seat next to hers. _Are these from delivery? Tell me you didn't go to the drive-thru or anything._

Suzume's laughter doesn't bear any weight nor any sound to it—it's just her eyes crinkling, her teeth flashing, and the corners of her lips stretching to accommodate a grin. She grabs a bowl to her right and fills it with meager rice. When she puts the bowl down, she rapidly signs, _I'm thirteen, Nii-san. I can handle myself. Besides, I didn't order anything; I just made these myself._

Furihata opens his mouth but Suzume beats him to it with her hands. _Nope, I didn't burn anything. It tastes decent, I think._

Grinning while shaking his head, Furihata picks his own chopsticks up and gets a first sample of the anchovies. _Whoa, this is great!_ His fingers are frantic while getting his message across. Suzume just nibbles on the radish, a wistful yet sad smile painting her features. They've gone over this for a thousand times; said their meals were satisfying, delectable, everything they've ever coveted for in the supermarket. Furihata sits in the corner in the middle of the night watching as Suzume clutches her stomach to quell its grumbling. He views the money he has left in his account, sobs wracking his shoulders when he realizes that it's not enough to feed them for a year.

Hyuuga, before leaving for the HQ, had thrust two cartons of milk into Furihata's arms. "_Managed to sneak away with some supplies,_" he had whispered, looking around for any bystanders. "_Warm milk always helps for a good night's sleep._"

At 9 pm, Furihata closes his eyes and thanks the universe for giving him a friend who could at least lend a hand in spite of being in a tight situation himself. The warm mug is sending tingles onto Furihata's palm, and Suzume shoves her fringed blankets down with a questioning look.

Furihata offers her the mug of milk and signs, _Might help you sleep a little better._

_I'm okay, Nii-san,_ Suzume signs back, but eventually she takes a sip under Furihata's urging stare and sighs contentedly. She empties the mug soon and huddles up in her blankets, suppressing the soreness in her back from sleeping on the floor. She holds her hands up. _Nii-san, can you sing me that lullaby Okaa-san used to sing us?_

The blockade in Furihata's throat is forcibly swallowed down, but it leaves a lasting ache in its wake. "Of course," Furihata says, knowing very well that Suzume can understand. He places his palm over her eyelids and props himself on his shoulder. Suzume leans into his touch, exhaling when Furihata starts caressing her forehead.

Furihata hums, recalling his family's backyard from ten years ago where he and Suzume used to 'uproot' their mother's AI gnomes in favor of finding the little treasures that their dad buried for them. He laughs when he remembers his parents' silly arguments about the color scheme of their house, and he knows by heart how his mother would giggle when his father swept her off her feet. He remembers having enough to eat, having a warm glass of milk, a comfortable cot, a whole family…Furihata remembers how human touch had felt like after a day of school, and now all he can see are silhouettes of his parents and their blurry faces.

Furihata's voice breaks when flashes of _that_ night thunder through his mind like echoes of anger hidden all these years. The glass windows broke (weren't they supposed to be shatterproof?), the alarms sounded, his parents dropped to the floor like flies, Suzume stayed under their father's desk, unable to speak a word. The police department swung by after thirty minutes, and they informed eight-year old Furihata that his parents were gone. Stray bullets, they said, but from Furihata's eyes then they were still weapons of murder, no matter how accidental they were.

He had asked Hyuuga if he ever saw his parents outside the city. Hyuuga, astonished, didn't affirm, saying that it was odd how he could never find them.

Suzume is fast asleep, breathing softly through her mouth and unaware of her brother's tears falling on her cheeks. Furihata finishes the lullaby, hearing Hyuuga's words reverberating in the small apartment. _Murdermurdermurder,_ the voice in his head says. _Come now, think of it as retribution. It's a small price to pay for the safety of the rest of the world. We just can't live without the necessary evil, can we?_

There are hiccups ravaging Furihata's lungs, and he hastily wipes his eyes in shame.

.

.

"How can I help you…?"

"F-Furihata will be fine," the brunet supplies, glancing warily around the busy hospital hallways. There's a mother pleading to see her son, but a buff AI stands guard outside the room. "Um, I was wondering if there's been a pregnancy or a birth lately…"

The nurse scrunches his nose at him and summons a holographic screen, seeming to scan Furihata. "You're a boy, Furihata-kun. I don't believe you're qualified to investigate in the premises."

Furihata holds his hands up. "I was just asking," he says, careful not to let the jitter slip from his tongue. "You and I know that there _should_ be no births and deaths at all."

The scanner blinks red. "You…you haven't been trained by the government, have you? You don't have any existing records in the system. Are you one of them?" Furihata raises his eyebrow, and the nurse whispers, "I mean, the Administrators. The government warned us of them."

"I'm 17," Furihata quickly answers, relief bubbling underneath the surface. Izuki must have deleted all of his records or blocked any access to them. "I don't even know who those are. Like I said…I'm just curious, because I've never seen a baby for a while."

Suspicion arises in the nurse's eyes. "Really. Kid—" Furihata coughs and drops his name—"okay, _Furihata-kun,_ I'm not authorized to release any of the information withheld in this hospital. You'll have to go up the chain of command to get even a tiny bit of info about our patients. Needless to say, they'll shut you up afterwards."

"But why go to all that trouble?" Furihata cocks his head to the side, finally gaining the confidence that Hyuuga has always told me to conjure. "I'm not looking for a specific person, so just the knowledge of a pregnancy isn't classified, right?"

"Believe me, the security is grating on my nerves, too—"

The nurse is cut off by blaring alarms and the abrupt appearance of holograms all over the hospital, each one showing a full-body profile of Furihata and a flashing sign that clearly reads INTRUDER.

"Obviously I'm out of here," Furihata says in a high-pitched voice and breaks into a run.

.

Hyuuga pounds on the glass table, causing the other Administrators to jerk from their positions. "I get that you're clearly inexperienced in this field, but what the _hell_ were you thinking?"

Furihata bites his lower lip so hard that he can nearly taste the rusty tang of blood. "I—"

"When I told you to search for medical records," Hyuuga is seething when he keeps pacing around the HQ, "I didn't mean having a friendly chat with the neighbor over tea and biscuits. Face-to-face conversations are the worst way to tell your lies."

"What did you want me to do, then?" Furihata helplessly says, now bearing the consequences of his previous failure. Riko is about to intervene, but Kiyoshi lifts his hand to silence her.

Hyuuga groans. "You're still a kid. I knew this was a bad idea—"

"Hyuuga, you're being a kid yourself," Riko mumbles, shaking her head at him to prevent him from losing his temper. Fortunately, Hyuuga does calm down a little after glancing at his comrades and seeing their disapproving looks.

"Okay, all of this _is_ a bad idea," Hyuuga pinches the bridge of his nose, still avoiding Furihata's stare. "But I wanted you to do what you did best. Hack into the system. Track all records through your screen, which should be fairly easy since you're not dealing with any condescending and deceiving pathetic excuses for humans."

Furihata slaps his forehead, lips quivering. "I…I'm sorry. I messed up, I messed everything up—"

"You didn't," Kiyoshi says, placing his hand on Furihata's shoulder to ease the tension. "It's not yet the end of the world—"

"Well, soon it will be," Hyuuga grumbles, but Kiyoshi fixes him a smile that could only mean his punishment later. Kiyoshi clears his throat and pats Furihata's back. "Like I said, we're still good. You go do the undercover stuff, while we go into the field and survey things. Stand and wait to see if the sky falls apart before we find the source and broadcast the truth all over the Lower World."

"If it does?" Furihata croaks, unable to believe that they might not be able to save everyone because of him. "My mistake could cost the lives of eleven billion people."

"This is not only your burden to carry," Kiyoshi quietly replies. "This is as much as everybody's fault as it is yours. Besides, it's not fault—it's destiny."

Mitobe sets a Plexiglas tablet before Furihata, which projects a holographic screen and keyboard. There are numbers filling up boxes, increasing at the speed of a nanosecond; the slot machine-like image only stops changing numbers once it reaches 11,111,111,113. Furihata squints at the bright screen and blinks when a timer appears beside the population count.

It's set to count down to two hours from now.

When Furihata looks up, the Administrators are already strapping in their gear, which consists of bulletproof vests, communicators, portable holograms, hoverboards, and guns. Fukuda lodges the latest version of the Glock in his belt's gun holster. "There might be some violence. You know, when we're preaching The End and authorities think we're a couple of psychotics who escaped from our wards. Worse, they could recognize us, realize that we're not possums playing dead, and kick us out of the metropolis again. For good."

Izuki pats his backpack and puts on his smartglasses, tapping the frames while adjusting to the information that appear right before his eyes. "We're set. I'll scout in the downtown and shopping districts, since I've already installed my own broadcast in the video screens. Flashy, but it will have to do."

Nodding to his left is Riko, who burns through Furihata with her stare. "Rain or shine, the world will know the truth. Even if the Apocalypse does take place, at least we won't be living under a rock anymore. I received word from the other HQs. They're ready."

Furihata's fingers are quivering when he turns back to the hologram and sees all of the open tabs. There's about five thousand of them—they're all gateways to withheld statistics. He only has two hours to track the newborns.

"W-wait," Furihata stammers before any of his comrades step out the door. "I know that this is a terrible time to ask for the compensation that you put up on the job, but…can you promise me one thing?"

Koganei cocks his head to the side, seeming to consider as the Administrators also do. Hyuuga is the one who speaks out. His voice breaks, but he coughs to regain his composure. "We don't have that perfect, foolproof plan that guarantees the fulfillment of petty things such as promises, but yeah, go ahead. We're listening."

"It'll be the first and last thing I ask of you," Furihata casts his head down low and clasps his hands, almost as if in a praying stance. Did humans from thousands of years ago believe in miracles? Did they have a god they could ask for favors, safety, or salvation? "Please promise me that no matter what happens, you'll protect my sister. Please keep Suzume safe."

The seven silhouettes in the doorway shift in unease. Hyuuga turns on his heel and takes a step forward, tossing over his shoulder, "We will. We promise."

They set on to their assignments, their footsteps disintegrating in the wind. Furihata is left to stare back at the hologram, and he closes all tabs and starts writing a code that could help him break into any firewall. He glances at the timer warily, hearing the ticks resound in his head as one hallucination.

One hour and fifty three minutes. He doesn't even have all the time in the world to save it.

.

Each minute that passes is equivalent to another bead of perspiration streaking Furihata's cheek. He might have a cardiac arrest long before The End takes place. His wrists feel like springs hanging listlessly from their pockets, and his mind is an overflowing keg of adrenaline. It takes all of his willpower not to smash the tablet into the floor and bury himself a grave while it's still not raining ash and blood.

Forty four minutes and counting. The code keeps malfunctioning, keeps being countered by security systems and chocked to the virtual gutter. He stands up and drags and enlarges the hologram into the size of a cinema screen. The birth and death rate counters show 0's. He paces, pressing on his temples and repeatedly whispering, _comeoncomeoncome**on**._

Furihata closes his eyes, and instead of gathering all of the information that could prove to be useful in his one hell of a dilemma, he sees his parents, their backyard, Suzume. The hallways of their house are adorned with tablets like the one in front of him now, each one showing photographs taken during family trips, birthdays, holidays, and regular days which are worth living for all the same. He remembers his father 'pulling the plug' for the dysfunctional AIs, telling him, "You don't have to persist if there's nothing left. You can't wait for something to spring out from nothing, can you?"

Now that he thinks about it—why is The End any different, if it was written in the stars?

Everything comes to a halt at that moment—the timer reads ten minutes, and Furihata isn't looking at it nor the open file on the screen. He's staring intently at the communicator on the glass table. Without another thought, he grabs it and slips it on his head. It buzzes to life immediately.

"This is another lie, isn't it? We can't do anything to save ourselves. The Aperture will open regardless of us knowing."

No response.

This time, Furihata helplessly shouts into the speaker. "Tell me! Please, I'm just…I'm _tired_ of all the lies. You know that this mission would fail."

The communicator proceeds to play strings of static until it self-activates its screen function. Furihata stumbles backward when a map of the city flashes in his eyes, seven red dots moving towards what appear to be huge domes and centers.

"_Evacuation centers_," Koganei's breathless voice hovers in the communicator. "_No time to explain._"

Izuki's voice rings next. "_We needed this. You needed this._"

"I don't—"

As always, Hyuuga is the one to straighten everything out, the one with the responsibility of filling Furihata in. Furihata's throat is dry when he listens to Hyuuga heave breaths, wishing that he could be more than an idiot for once so he could also be worth confiding to. The worst thing about secrets is that they always surrounded him, and never did Furihata hold one of them as if it was his own.

"_Blame it on the universe,_" Hyuuga growls in the midst of ushering others to the nearest center. "_Be angry. It's your right. We made you do this,"_ he huffs, letting out curses when an explosion rips nearby, "_because you'd be better off knowing you tried rather than sitting in the dark and watching as we're all reduced to sediments in the road._"

The library rumbles and shakes, causing the shelves to topple like dominoes. Furihata's whimper gets caught, and he crouches under the first coffee table that had only brought him trouble. Still, he keeps the communicator close. "P-please, stop making my choices for me."

"_Suzume, come here!_" Riko screams, her shrill voice piercing through Furihata's communicator. Furihata realizes with a jolt that he can't save his sister in time. He crawls out from his hiding place and runs to the door, narrowly avoiding the falling debris and glancing at his watch.

_One minute._

Furihata scrambles out of the crumbling library, accidentally skipping a step and twisting his ankle. He groans out in pain, somehow landing on his side and decreasing the impact. The world becomes hazy beyond recognition, but eventually his vision refocuses and he catches a sight of the blue sky.

Like everything else, it's falling apart.

"No…" he murmurs, unaware that the others are still hearing him. He's lying on the ground with a sprained ankle, dusty clothes, and a communicator that serves as his lifeline. Like this, he is what he always thought he was: a coward. A grain of sand in a landmine. An insignificant seventeen year-old boy who got to put the pieces together. Even if humans are invincible now, their memories of cities, family, friends, lovers, pain—of _life_ itself—won't ever be repaired.

Hyuuga's right again. It's their minds that would kill them inside, even if everything else doesn't.

The communicator vibrates beside his ear. "_We still need you, damn it,_" Hyuuga grinds out. "_Think you can give up now? Not on my watch._"

_It's not giving up,_ Furihata wants to say. _It's succumbing, conforming. Adhering to destiny or whatever's out there to cram us into the place where we are now._

Dark clouds begin to overrule the sky while the Aperture widens its rim. At the sight of lightning, Furihata instinctively cups his ears and waits for the inevitable clap of thunder. No sound ever comes.

Furihata experiences an epiphany as he lowers his hands from the sides of his head.

_Why am I just waiting for it?_

Inhaling sharply, Furihata heaves himself up on one foot, holding the communicator close to his lips. In spite of the darkness monopolizing the heavens, he limps, staggering with every step yet finally, finally knowing what a hell of a menace destiny truly is. Right now, his 'destiny' is plastered across the Aperture like a revelation. Staring at him right in the face, daring him to run away.

For what it's worth, his role in this universe isn't monumental until The End. He might as well take what he can get.

"You're right," Furihata tremulously mumbles into the communicator, hoping that someone is still listening in spite of the chaos that walks the Lower World. "I can't give up. Not like this."

.

.

Parties. Vacations. Interviews, exams, graduations, marriages, projects, laws, retirement…those are things that people can prepare and plan for, either by disclosing details to confidantes, filling up yearly planners with unintelligible scribbles, or handing in neatly printed and bound documents that cover every inch of what humans want to see in their futures. These are dates that people dread or anticipate, even if they know that everything will go according to what they envision.

When it comes to death, the planning part is a little futile. Someone can create a bucket list and jump off the nearest cliff to prove how fragile yet strong humans can be, but all of that happens pre-mortem. Humans create distractions such as wills and handwritten letters to loved ones to prepare for that one goodbye that no one ever wants to hear, but in truth, no one is ever geared to die, because no one knows what comes after. No one knows if there's an after.

But of course, humans don't have to worry about the very thought of death. It's one less thing that they have to face.

.

Furihata hugs his knees close to his chest, his forehead glistening with the sheen of cold sweat. Planning his decisions just keeps him awake, and he goes over every dialogue he's thought of in the last hour. His ankle is still throbbing with the minor injury, but he presses on the bandage to counter the pain with even more pain.

Beside him, Suzume snores softly, a few scratches on her cheeks but otherwise unharmed. When Furihata arrived at the evac, he fell to his knees in front of Riko, thanking her ceaselessly for keeping her promise. Riko had even learned the basics of sign language in under two hours just to calm Suzume down.

"Can't sleep?" Izuki walks over to his spot on the floor and hands Furihata a can of soda. The latter politely declines.

Furihata sighs. "Not when I know that the sky is being torn open outside. These walls—they're not barriers. They're thin membranes bound to break the longer we leave the Aperture open."

Izuki raises an eyebrow and says, "I'm reading your concerns. You want to be _the_ sacrifice, don't you, Furihata-kun? Are you becoming more self-righteous by the second?"

"No, it's not that—that I _want_ to be. I will be if I must," Furihata mutters into his arms. "We don't have much of a choice, and even if no one's dying, the pain's still…there. Scratching and forcing its way out."

There's a brief silence before Izuki points his index finger at Suzume's sleeping form. "Your sister? You'll leave her to close the Aperture? Is it worth abandoning the only family you have left to see the 'other side' we've always dreamt of discovering?"

Furihata flinches at the accusatory tone. "It's worth saving the world, and I think that's what matters more in the end."

Izuki's answer is light laughter, which he muffles with his palm. There's something so young in his features, and it almost seems as if it's begging to be let go of once more. "You've grown up considerably these past few days. You sound so…old. You think you're down to the last wire."

Furihata smiles sheepishly, the grime framing his cheekbones under the low light. Everybody else is huddled close to each other, hoping to drown the fear out with human contact. Furihata knows that their fear isn't something like his—theirs hangs over their heads and takes a step back when they spread the warmth on their fingertips, while his clutches at his chest and mars his insides. Even if he does reach out for Suzume or his friends, nothing will change. Fear is integral to his being just as much as air is.

"Probably."

They sit like that for three more hours before Izuki decides that he's done for the night and he's still human for wanting to rest. Furihata, on the other hand, recalls the information he looked up right before the virtual systems went down—the government has set up a contraption, one that would take the sacrifice to the Aperture— in front of the capitol. It's unthinkable for them to have hired experts who could build that contraption during the onset of the Apocalypse. They must have hidden it for more than a thousand years.

It sounds so simple in Furihata's head: step right into governmental property, surrender as a sacrifice, and bind the officials to an agreement that would guarantee Suzume's sustenance. If he's actually, completely up for the plan, Furihata could have gone out in the dead of the night.

He's still here. That makes all the difference.

.

They're all there when he reaches the point of no return—when they cross the capitol's threshold, Suzume tightens her grip on her brother's hand, and Hyuuga's hand latches onto Furihata's shoulder to stop him momentarily. "This isn't what I intended for you to do, and you know it. _I'll_ go in your place."

It takes much of Furihata's small courage to do as much as shrug Hyuuga's hand off. He lets go of Suzume for a while and faces all of them—his sister, the brother he's never had, the dead strangers who became his friends in less than a week. He thinks all of this is foolish and reckless, but, well, Furihata has the title of "idiot" to live up to, or so he thinks.

"S…starting now," Furihata musters up his remaining will even when his knees are wobbling. "I get to make my decisions. And this is the first and most important of them."

Suzume's face scrunches up as sobs wrack through her. She signs, _Nii-san, don't leave me._

Furihata smiles and opens his arms, not surprised when Suzume runs straight into them and embraces his waist. It's better like this, he muses, since Suzume can't see him cry.

.

The officials come around a little later, who exclaim at the sight of the sole volunteer standing in front of their door. One of them mentions the prophecy of the Aperture's opening and states that the sacrifice must not just be consensual—it must be voluntary. None of that matters now; Furihata's telling all of them that he's afraid, but this is what's meant to be. Hyuuga argues and Suzume protests with fervent signing.

"I'm sorry it had to end like this," Mitobe whispers, and it startles Furihata more than it should. Nevertheless, Furihata grins after being taken aback, using the crinkle of his eyes as a blockade for the tears.

"Who said anything about anything ending?" Furihata scratches the back of his neck. "There's another world out there. I'll be home someday, even before you know it."

_I can't lose you,_ Suzume signs, not minding the wetness on her cheeks. She hiccups and shakes her head furiously.

Furihata pats her head—it's easy to touch her like this before he can't get to touch her anymore. It's painstakingly easy to look all of them in the eye and tell them that it's okay.

Riko interrupts his thoughts, hastily wiping a tear before saying, "I want to beat you up because you're not making sense, but for a teenager, you're awfully right. You're too brave for your own good."

It doesn't fail to make Furihata chuckle nervously and look up at the uncharted territory he's supposed to travel to. The skies aren't clearing up at all. The thought that he can change the weather at the least makes his insides flutter in spite of the sick feeling that currently marauds his stomach. "I want to think that, Riko-san. I truly do."

The Administrators stand in front of him, with Riko wrapping an arm around Suzume. If they weren't terrified, they would have taken Furihata's place. Furihata doesn't understand the forming pit in his abdomen—he's not so sure if it's there because he's proud of himself for doing this or because he's disappointed that no one is coming to his aid now.

Kiyoshi clears his throat and says, "Well, we…guess this is farewell, then?"

"Yeah," Furihata mumbles, closing his eyes to the gust of wind that rolls over them. His ribcage has faced much wrath, but he doesn't feel pain anymore, not even in his ankle. The only thing that stands out is the emptiness inside of him. His body feels hollow. "Yeah, I think this is farewell."

_Take care,_ Suzume mouths with uncertainty, the corners of her lips twitching as they move in an unfamiliar fashion, _I love you, Nii-san._

_I love you,_ Furihata mouths back.

.

He's told to stand on a platform that's glowing cyan like his hoverboard, and maybe, just maybe, he can pretend that he's just flying over streets and escaping from the traffic. He hears noises from the numerous buttons that the officials are pressing on the generator of the contraption, and then comes the slow hum that indicates that the platform is alive and well-prepared for other-worldly travel.

Furihata can't believe how smoothly it has gone from the moment he told the Administrators his idea to this very second, but he knows that he's not alone in convincing Hyuuga and the others to let him choose. The machines whir like they have just been developed. Like they have just been born. It's funny how Furihata can discern the interest of inanimate objects in a world that's worth sacrificing for.

He looks at Izuki and whispers, "Thank you."

Izuki smiles at him and offers him a salute.

Around him, the trembling city is a mountain of shards and broken frames, of abandoned homes and the remnants of the wrath of something as trivial as fate. Furihata doesn't shudder anymore when he hears the sharp slice of jets through the storming skies, mostly because he knows that they're looking for the lost, and partly because there's a thrumming in himself that's far louder than the clamor that surrounds him.

The platform begins to rise, and Furihata waves, swallowing down the pesky ache.

He tells them, nearly stumbling and falling to his knees on the platform, "I'll be back! I promise!"

"I'll make sure of it!" Hyuuga shouts back. He waves back. Hyuuga takes his glasses off and mumbles incoherently while hiding his eyes under the crook of his arm.

The faltering smile quickly morphs into a straight line, and Furihata lifts his head and stares at the Aperture. He closes his eyes at the first drop of rain that falls on his face and lets his tears flow along when the downpour gets heavier. Everything is collapsing below him, but he couldn't care, not now—he's too busy taking large gulps from the thinning air. He doesn't even notice when the synthetic fibers, which were fastened to his finger the moment he became a part of the Administrators' project, lose their hold and fall from the sky.

Furihata casts a furtive glance towards the ground, where everybody else who matters to him are letting him go. Huge mistake. He extends his hand and reaches out for them, hoping that they will beg him to stay. Hell, he's begging himself to stop this lunacy. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to leave—

The rain begins to cease when Furihata's nearly there, but he curls around himself and traps his sobs with cupped hands. Strange enough, he doesn't feel like he's about to be squashed by air pressure.

The platform stops pulsating in blue and whirs quietly. It must be the farthest it can take Furihata.

_Jump._

Furihata blinks through blurry kaleidoscope eyes and wrinkles his nose at the distant voice seeming to originate from the Upper World. He balls his fists and turns slowly, careful not to fall.

_Jump,_ the voice whispers again. _It's the only way you'll get there._

The Aperture is at his fingertips, but there's enough space for him to still back out.

_Let the wind carry you away._

_Jump, Kouki._

His heart is a wild beast ravaging his chest with maybes, nevers, and a little bit of okay—_okay,_ Furihata says out of the things he wants to hear himself whisper. _Okay._

There's a stream of sunlight piercing through the treacherous clouds, and it draws him in.

.

So he jumps.

.

.

The last thing Furihata sees before he emerges into the unknown is a ruined yet beautiful world. He has to catch his breath and remember that he's still alive after all of this.

.

**to be continued**


	2. Chapter 2

a/n: i did say i'd be tempted to post the next chapter haha ^^

* * *

**Part Two**

**CONCORD**

He wakes up drowning.

At first, he's floating, supported by the buoyancy of comfort, dreams, and sleep. It's like moving in gelatin—he doesn't have a watch, not like he needs it with the absence of his sense of time and the fact that time itself is motionless, desperate to keep itself a young and fixed vessel. Everything seems to take a long walk to forever. He moves, and there's an ebbing current that pulls him rather than contradicts his intentions of plowing forward.

It's all very fluid, until Furihata opens his eyes and inhales.

Bubbles.

Cold.

_Air._

He—can't—_breathe._

It eventually progresses into a struggle between Furihata and the water which doesn't feel like water at all. Furihata kicks his feet to search for the surface and winces when he hits a rock. His lungs are filling up fast. He can't see anything but darkness.

His memories zero in on the third grade of school, during which he briefly participated in swimming lessons. Hold your breath, don't look back, carve into the water. Don't be frantic. You'll get out of there soon.

The moment Furihata breaks out of the peculiar water, he breathes, long and deep, until he can feel the choking catching up with him. He sputters water and falls right back, but is surprised when he's met with the bottom of the shallow pond. There's gravel underneath him, tracing jagged patterns along his soaked clothes.

Furihata blinks once, twice. His teeth are chattering from being submerged for too long. When he orients himself with his surroundings, the first thing he considers is his attire. Before he…_died,_ he remembered wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Furihata frowns at his state of dress; he's clad in a metallic garment with plates on his chest. No wonder it took him a lot of effort to resurface.

He notices that there's something jabbing him in his side, and he realizes that it's a long iron blade, similar to the ones in the online games he used to play. Whatever it is, it certainly looked dangerous.

_I'm supposed to be dead,_ Furihata thinks, widening his eyes. _Maybe there is an after._

"That's called a sword, what's strapped to your waist."

Furihata gasps audibly and coughs to cover his slip. He turns towards the source of the voice, but only shadows greet him hello. He listens to the small tides and attempts to stand up. It proves to be a difficult task, and he nearly pitches forward and lands on his face when he finds that his getup is too heavy.

"And that's an armor," the voice murmurs passively, causing Furihata to jolt. "Museums of today don't feature armors anymore, but they've protected warriors in battle long before your time."

Furihata shivers as goosebumps run through his spine. "W-who are you? Where am I?"

The shadows dance around him, passing through his very fiber like holograms. They are cold, so cold. "I am the Necromancer. You are in the Upper World, though only at the gates."

"The gates?" Furihata, dumbfounded, gazes blindly at the lingering darkness. "I don't see any gates. Where am I supposed to go?"

The Necromancer sighs softly. "Walk with me for a while. I will show you the way."

"…I don't see you, either."

"I'm right here," a voice brushes Furihata's ear, and the brunet turns around and yelps at the sight of a boy. Staring right back at him are blank, powder blue irises. The boy—the one who claims to be the Necromancer—blinks and purses his mouth. He's noticeably thin even through his black oversized garments, and his skin appears to be pallid. The light seems to come from the Necromancer, because when Furihata tries to look away, he can see nothing but a dark void.

"You're," Furihata tests the word on his tongue and steps back cautiously, hearing the water swish around his boot-clad feet. "Young."

The Necromancer's expression softens with something akin to resignation. "Believe me, Furihata-kun, I've been here for far too long."

Furihata takes the Necromancer's appearance in contemplation and begins to walk when the Necromancer does. The water continues to whisk against their ankles, and Furihata follows quietly.

The Necromancer, without looking back at Furihata, says as a matter of fact, "You have questions for me."

"Too many for my liking," Furihata affirms, reaching inside his armor to scratch at a particularly itchy patch of skin. "But I was wondering if you knew about my world—if you've seen what happened."

"Yes," the Necromancer replies tersely. "You're asking me if everything has become stable."

Furihata stops in his tracks for a moment before deciding to trudge again. "I—Yes. I was wondering if the people are okay. If they're safe now."

"Relatively, yes," says the Necromancer, who continues to walk on an invisible path towards the nothingness.

"What do you mean by 'relatively'?"

"Humans," the Necromancer starts, his tone devoid of any emotion, "are only as 'okay' as they make themselves out to be. You've saved their world. But I can't say for certain that they've saved themselves."

"Oh."

The Necromancer halts his steps and opens a door that, if Furihata's perceptive skills are above average and he guessed right, wasn't previously there. The light from the Upper World is blinding yet inviting, familiarly warm yet distantly cold.

"But I believe that humans can change," the Necromancer says in fondness. "I hope that they will."

Furihata crosses his arms thoughtfully in spite of the iron plates digging into his arms and sides. "…Aren't you human? I mean—it's a stupid question, but—"

The Necromancer gently pushes him towards the door, his fingers leaving traces of ice along Furihata's skin. Furihata flinches.

"Farewell, Furihata-kun," the Necromancer tells him, his body slowly vanishing and melting into the nameless umbrages that surround him. His voice also becomes fainter. "We will meet again when somebody calls for you."

"What—"

The door closes behind him and he filters the light with his wrist, squinting to overcome the temporary blindness. When he's finally regained his senses, he looks back, only to be greeted by an entirely different landscape—it's a meadow of greens, yellows, and blues, stretching across the horizon like the highway of eternity. The breeze rustles through the land. There are chirps from little creatures that Furihata has never seen before, and he opens his mouth to take in the foreign view.

"Wow," Furihata exhales out of sheer amazement. So many things are moving, and they all look so real in comparison with the AIs that roam the Lower World.

He starts walking to find a civilization, if ever one existed. Furihata keeps turning his head to imprint every detail into his mind—there's the tiny green objects on the ground, poking his boots; there's the river glistening under the glare of the sun; there's the unknown critters that sing high-pitched melodies; there's the patches of a variety of colors swaying along with the wind. Furihata doesn't know what to call them, but he does know that the afterlife is nothing compared to what he imagined it would be. It's far more breathtaking than any place he's ever traveled to.

By estimation, Furihata has walked two miles before he realizes that he is neither hungry nor thirsty. Exhaustion is a stranger to his body; he doesn't feel so human now, doesn't feel so brittle. If humans are invincible, then he is feeling much more than that.

For the first time, he truly feels as if he is alive.

The view of huge fortifications looms overhead, signifying Furihata's chance at finding a city. He runs, relieved that the wind is pushing him in the right direction, and raises his arms like his plane's soaring wings. The new freedom ripples through his fingertips in an inundation. He allows himself to be unrestrained, to be a child—if only for a little while.

Furihata pants a little when he arrives in front of the towering walls constructed out of sturdy material that he's never encountered before. Tentatively, he brushes his fingers along the coarse surface of the barrier and wonders how the inhabitants of the Upper World have compacted the blocks.

Everything is so solid here—there are no holograms sneaking their way past his bones or glass sliding under his skin ever so smoothly. The surfaces aren't perfect, and the infrastructure isn't as sleek as those in the Lower World.

"Oi," a tan-skinned stranger calls him out with a drawl, drawing his attention. Furihata's shoulders hike up in astonishment. The stranger, clothed in a closely-fitting black v-necked shirt and equally tight bottoms, cracks his neck, baring his fangs and scratching around his pointy ears. "Hm, I bet you're a new one around here. Can't exactly say that normal people go around being fascinated by regular bricks."

"Dai—Aomine-kun, your mouth," a girl chimes in in a reprimanding tone, popping in from behind the male who looks ferocious yet lackadaisical at the same time. The girl, with long locks and bright eyes dyed in pink, turns toward Furihata and bows sincerely, her robes speckled with gold brushing her knees. She has a bound object of some sort in her grasp. "Please excuse Aomine-kun and his manners—or the lack of them."

The one called Aomine shrugs and later hisses when the pink-haired girl grabs his tail—a _tail,_ Furihata thinks, aghast—out of the blue. The girl continues, "I'm Momoi Satsuki, by the way."

"F-Furihata Kouki," the brunet holds his hand out, sensing the spread of the reddening on his cheeks. Aomine must have noticed it, too, from the way he fixes his predatory glare on Furihata. The latter freezes in place. "I…It's a pleasure to meet you, Momoi-san."

Momoi grins at him, tucks a tuft of hair behind her left ear, and shakes Furihata's hand. When Aomine groans at the gesture, she tightens her grip on the end of his pointed tail and pouts. "Aomine-kun, you don't have to be so nasty about welcoming a new citizen."

"Sure," Aomine says and wrenches his tail out of Momoi's hands begrudgingly. "I hate to break it to you, Furihata, but you're not getting any favors from me if it's the girl you're after. Go find someone else to bother."

"Aomine-kun," Momoi warns, crossing her arms over her chest, against which the object that Furihata has been intrigued by is still pressed.

"Um." Furihata croaks and is unable to help the squeak in his voice when Aomine turns to him, ready to pounce and tear whatever is in his way to shreds. Aomine's stance, in spite of the laziness that seeps through his expression, is one that tells just how much confidence he has in himself to attack and emerge victorious. His strength is apparent in his hardened gaze, his toned forearms, and his large build. Furihata doesn't doubt the fact that Aomine could take him apart with just his eyes if ever he overcame his boredom.

Momoi perks up and prompts, "What is it, Furihata-kun?"

"It's just that," Furihata grabs the hilt of his weapon—what the Necromancer had called a sword earlier—and lets his fingers skim on the rough imprints on the metal. "Are the both of you even human?"

He's met with uncharacteristic silence until Aomine throatily laughs. Momoi follows in his fit soon after and clutches her stomach, creating a boisterous noise that only makes Furihata question his vocabulary choices.

Aomine shakes his head and chuckles. "Man, I can't believe there's someone far more ignorant than Bakagami is, considering he's established his own bracket of stupidity. Do you _think_ humans have tails? I mean sure, the vertebrae stuff—"

"The coccyx," Momoi corrects him, placing a finger under her eyelids to collect the forming tears. She giggles. "Furihata-kun, I don't want to seem rude, but you've gone through the Necromancer as soon as you arrived, haven't you? Surely you must have concluded something by then."

Furihata bites the inside of his cheek. "…You're another species."

"Well, not exactly…" Momoi drifts off, her eyes lingering on the space behind Furihata. She suddenly raises a finger and exclaims, "Okay! This isn't exactly the thing we discuss about outside the city walls, so I'd suggest we talk about this over a cup of tea."

Aomine holds his hands up. "I'm _not_ paying."

Momoi wrinkles her nose, patting the small pouch strapped to her waist. "I'm only letting you off this time, Aomine-kun." Tucking her object under her left arm and looping her right one around Furihata's arm, she marches forward, almost skipping, and says, "Alright, let's go, Furihata-kun!"

"Satsuki, hey—!"

Out of courtesy, Furihata glances back at Aomine apologetically, straining his neck while being dragged by Momoi to the heart of the city. He's met with a hiss and an unwilling stomp of feet behind him.

.

.

Chamomile tea is _not_ supposed to be this invigorating.

Chamomile tea should come in powder form, its granules indistinguishable from little balls of paper infused with soothing drugs. It should be packed in one-liter bottles that immediately radiate with heat once water is added to the mix; this convenience is all thanks to the multi-million dollar companies that spend so much on research about the ways to trick people into believing that they're consuming tea rather than recycled thingamajigs that Furihata would rather not discover.

Chamomile tea shouldn't look like…this.

Chamomile tea shouldn't be served in cups and with—what did Momoi call them again? The browning things that appear very similar to the ones that he saw in the fields?

"Leaves," Momoi says, taking a sip of her tea and closing her eyes in appreciation of the aroma. When she opens them again, she casts Furihata a frown. "I'm worried about you, Furihata-kun. You probably don't even know half of the things that exist here."

Furihata sighs and puts his own cup down on the saucer. "…Considering I just arrived, Momoi-san, I think it's fair enough."

"Or you're just a blockhead," Aomine offers, chugging down a glass of ale (Furihata pumps his fist in his head, relieved that he could at least remember one thing that Momoi has been describing in detail for the past hour—or was it an hour?). Momoi elbows him in the ribs without subtlety, and he groans, "What? I'm just saying that humans have forgotten so much they became dumb in the process. Do you even know how to climb a tree?"

"What tree?" Furihata mumbles, fiddling with the scabbard of his sword under the table. "I mean, what _is_ a tree?"

Aomine points to Furihata, exasperation painting his tone. "See? _See_? Great, we're talking to a guy with the mental age of a toddler."

Momoi shoots him a glare. "That's wonderful, Aomine-kun. Perhaps you can teach him, then, since you've got similar wavelengths." She dismisses Aomine's attitude and calls the attention of a server, asking to refill Furihata's cup with more tea. She stirs her tea with gentle flicks of her wrist and watches as the liquid forms concentric circles. "Sorry, Furihata-kun. Sometimes Aomine-kun just doesn't know how to control his mouth."

While Aomine spouts something that sounds similar to denial in the background, Furihata nods in understanding, unable to meet Aomine's gaze. "It's fine, Momoi-san. But, um, what exactly is a tree?"

The melody that Momoi hums is strangely familiar. "Do you remember the meadow where you ended up in?"

"Vaguely, yes," Furihata admits, recalling bright colors adorning the fields.

"Okay," Momoi cocks her head to the side and puts a finger to her lips. "Hmm, how do I put this…do you remember things that have brown, uh—"

"Stands?" says Furihata on impulse.

Aomine tries to rein in his laughter with furrowed eyebrows but fails, guffawing and nearly toppling his glass of ale from the table. Momoi's kick to his foot is audible with a painful crunch, and Furihata swallows, pretending that violence had not just transpired.

The crease on Momoi's forehead shows as she clasps her palms on the table. "Stands, that would work. Do they have green tops? Trees are kind of like lamps—it's hard to explain, but I think we're on the right track."

Furihata releases the hunch of his back and leans on his chair. "Oh, so those are trees."

What follows after the brief discussion of trees, flowers, leaves, birds, and other forms of life is a simple interrogation on Momoi's part. Furihata's head is already going in circles after the overview on the inhabitants of the Upper World. He can't help but smile when he remembers his session with the Administrators. The venue for his welcome in the Upper World is also reminiscent of the library whom he could have always been a stranger to if it had not been for the job posting—there is so much to see and learn about that he's not sure if his cranium is still intact.

Momoi and Aomine had led him under colorful canopies and through thick crowds, navigating through what they called the marketplace—"_You probably called it a shopping center back then,_" Momoi had whispered, only confusing Furihata even more. He had looked for humongous screens displaying advertisements, but all he had heard were the yells of vendors, and all he had seen were various products being shoved into his face, none of which were familiar to him.

"I want to know more about you, Furihata-kun," Momoi says, not even aware that night has already fallen. She pokes Aomine's cheek when the male has fallen asleep, snoring comfortably on the table as if he is back in his own bed. Aomine grunts and resumes his slumber.

Furihata yawns, wincing at the burden that the heavy armor inflicts on his sagging shoulders. "Uh…where do you want me to start?"

"Mm, I don't know," Momoi replies thoughtfully. "I could ask you what your story is and you could tell me what you _think_ your story is. You could tell me about how you came here, about your hobbies, your phobias…I really don't know where you should begin. The ball's in your court now."

Decision-making hasn't really been one of Furihata's strong suits, so he settles for his instinct. "W-well, the Aperture opened up for me. There were freakstorms all over my—_their_ world, and I recently discovered that only a sacrifice could quell the Apocalypse."

Although Momoi's expression does not signify any of her expectations for him to continue, Furihata can't shelter and control the words falling from his mouth. "I have a…an impaired sister who's in high school." He exhales shakily for a minute before he notices that Momoi does not ask him what a high school is in spite of having none in this world. "Our parents died when we were little, and I dropped out of school to finance her education. Then this happened."

"She's all alone," Momoi quietly says, resting her chin on her palm.

"Not really, I guess," Furihata replies. "I have some friends whom I trust would take care of her. They're also the ones who told me all about the Aperture…but they were wrong in some accounts."

"Tell me, Furihata-kun," Momoi says in curiosity, "what is the Aperture?"

Furihata blinks in confusion. "I don't…it's the 'door' to your world, isn't it? The only wormhole through which I passed?"

"Oh," is Momoi's response accentuated with light laughter. "We don't really call it the 'Aperture' because it isn't that significant. And about the Apocalypse…it seems as if they've been lying about that to you, too—or they probably just mixed up the terminology."

Before Furihata can inquire further, Momoi stands up and hauls Aomine's arm with her. She blurts, "Ah, it's getting late! We should be heading back to our quarters. Aomine-kun, wake up already!"

Aomine makes a sluggish noise and tries to stand up on his own, knees nearly buckling underneath him. "Yeah, yeah," he waves his hand and rubs the sleep away from his eyes. He groggily stumbles out of the tavern and into the night, somehow maintaining his sense of direction despite his being half-asleep.

"W-wait, Momoi-san," Furihata exclaims, drowsiness fading away as he begins to realize the reality of his situation. Momoi turns to look at him in question. "I…I really don't have anywhere to sleep. And I didn't bring any money with me. I'm pretty much screwed."

"Don't worry about it!" Momoi chirps brightly. Furihata wonders how she is miraculously energetic in spite of how late it already is. Perhaps she's a hybrid of a nocturnal creature of some sort. "You see, everybody lives in a palace, free of charge. It's been our home for what seems like forever now."

"Oh."

"But since you're a newcomer," Momoi adds, "you'll have to register with the Court. The members keep tabs on all of the residents and are in charge of distributing supplies, clothing and meals included. I'm sure they'll be happy to see you. We haven't had a neophyte in _ages._"

"…Right." Surely the members of the aforementioned Court are as amicable as Momoi has been so far, Furihata thinks.

"It'd be best if I can accompany you, though. Akashi-kun can be…intimidating at times."

The mention of intimidation jerks Furihata out of his stupor. "I'm sorry? Who is 'Akashi-kun'?"

Momoi takes his hand and leads him away from the illuminated path—"_Cobblestone,_" Momoi told him earlier—and towards fields that glow like the stars. Once they step foot on what this world's inhabitants named as the grass, the lights swarm around them, forming arrows that point to the direction of the palace.

"He's a friend from the Court," Momoi says, almost in affection, touching one of the creatures that guide them—fireflies. "One of the most important people you'll ever meet."

Furihata holds his index finger out and is surprised when a firefly lands on it, twinkling with fluttering wings. It looks so small and fragile yet capable of doing anything. "Are you…you know—"

Cupping her mouth, Momoi giggles in the midst of trudging towards the palace. "Oh, no, certainly not. But he really is one of the most significant people here. I imagine that it's only because of that fact that many are petrified in his presence."

"Why is he that important, then?" If 'Akashi' terrifies a huge number of the residents, then he must be another creature entirely, one that is even more threatening than Aomine. Perhaps he is a beast, or worse—

"For one," Momoi notes, huffing a little from their walk. "You could say that Akashi-kun is our king."

.

.

They say that there are some places that one is forbidden to venture to; the doors to these places are either haunting or tantalizing, depending on how a person handles the burden of not knowing what is beyond. Some bedtime stories are designed to separate dreams from reality, to discourage children from probing the unimagined. Storytellers tell them that they will be swallowed by darkness once they open the untouched doors. They whisper that there is nothing but despair awaiting them on the other side.

What they don't say is that there are worlds far more beautiful than theirs. There are worlds where modernity is traded for stagnancy and science for magic. Where elegance is not seen in the possession of the newest AIs but in red carpets and chandeliers.

Furihata's jaw goes slack the moment he enters the palace. Nobody told him about a world where words cannot suffice as descriptors.

"It's a perfect home, isn't it?" Momoi nudges his arm, the force not even enough to keep him from being aghast.

Pairs, enveloped in each other's arms, move about in perpetual circles, following the music that wafts across the large hall. Intricate golden embellishments adorn the walls and ceiling, with magnificent and regal red curtains framing wide windows. In the middle of the ballroom is a lustrous fountain that jets iridescent water. Creatures of all kinds, none of which Furihata could name in a heartbeat, hum along to the waltz.

There are pixies (Momoi might as well be a walking encyclopedia, what with all the knowledge she possesses) in gossamer gowns, wolves whose images flicker from dogs to men wrapped in fur, spirits that are ablaze or frozen, flowers that sing, giants that pluck candles from the cascading light fixtures. Some of those who are dancing are afloat, while some vanish into thin air to keep to themselves.

Furihata stammers, nearly stumbling on his feet at the sight. "W-wow. I've never seen anything like it."

Beside him, Momoi is already conversing with an older woman who twirls her fingers and produces a clock through what appears to be magic. Furihata opens his mouth in amazement, and Momoi thanks the woman and turns back to him.

"We only have a few minutes before the dance ends and everybody goes to sleep," Momoi informs and directs him to a long corridor to the right. She starts walking, motioning for Furihata to do the same although the latter's eyes are still plastered on the ballroom's occupants. "Furihata-kun!"

"Y-yes!" Furihata blurts, dashing towards Momoi in haste. "I'm sorry, I was just caught up in the dance that I—"

"It's fine, Furihata-kun," Momoi sighs. She drops the bound object in her arms—Furihata still hasn't queried it—and murmurs words from a different language. To Furihata's surprise, the object does not meet the floor—it disappears in a small void.

When she sees the shock register in Furihata's face, Momoi explains, "We can summon wormholes sometimes, but I can only make small ones because of my limited capacity for magic. I just transported my book—" _Ah, so that's what it was,_ Furihata muses –"to my room. I've been foolish to have carried it all day."

"…I understand."

The atmosphere becomes unsettling as they approach the tall double doors at the end of the hallway. Upon scrutiny, the doors bear golden carvings of multiple stories blended into one canvas. An engraved snake binds the doors together, and when Momoi touches it, it slithers to the side and grants them passage.

Momoi strides to the center of the room easily. Furihata follows, but his ankles shake as soon as the doors shut close behind him.

"Satsuki, I'm surprised that you've come at this hour."

One of the many regrets that Furihata has is this: at the simple murmur of his new companion's name, he looks up from his feet and locks on the person on the throne who unclasps his hands and sets them on the armrest. Before he can discern what is happening, Furihata gasps as he's drawn towards the throne by an invisible force. He pants, his gaze fleeting across the person's face, until he finally gawks at his eyes.

Gold and crimson stare back at him. He should be used to cases of heterochromia by now, but his nerves are wracked by something else entirely and he trembles.

"I didn't know we had a newcomer, Satsuki," the ostensibly young owner of the eyes stands up from his throne and beckons Momoi to come closer. His lips are thinned into a smile, and his fingers curl into a fist, rising in the air. Furihata whimpers when the imperceptible force once again manipulates him by hoisting him up from the ground, and it is only then that he realizes that he has fallen on his backside earlier.

Much to Furihata's astonishment, Momoi easily steps forward and replies, "Ah, Akashi-kun, I didn't know that someone was supposed to come up here, either. I didn't hear anything prophesied in the past few days, let alone the past few years."

She clears her throat and further says, "Anyway, this is Furihata Kouki. Furihata-kun, meet Akashi-kun."

Furihata only swallows when Akashi turns to him and resumes his smile. His scarlet hair, under the lambent light, resembles the color of blood. There is nothing menacing about his appearance—in fact, he looks closest to being human with his seemingly normal features. The only thing that could set him apart from the people of the Lower World are his garments, which include a double-breasted suit and two flowers whose red and white blooms peek from his pocket.

_Catchflies,_ a voice brushes against his ear. Furihata blinks, teeth still chattering.

"Is that so," Akashi remarks, thoroughly interested in the shivering sight before him. "It's my pleasure to meet you, Kouki. Your arrival is, admittedly, unprecedented."

Furihata nods vehemently to indicate his acknowledgement and to soothe his neurons gone haywire. Never mind that Akashi is already calling him on a first-name basis—he has more immediate concerns to deal with.

Akashi moves towards him in a calculated manner, his eyes observing. "Very well. Satsuki, you can leave us."

"Akashi-kun, before I go…I was hoping that the rest of the Court would be here to designate a room for Furihata-kun," Momoi says, her gaze flickering between Akashi and Furihata. Her expression softens in sympathy for Furihata's current state. "I hope that it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"There's no need to call them in the dead of the night," Akashi answers. "Since we haven't expected Kouki, there are no available rooms for him."

Furihata bites his lip to stifle the quiver that runs through it, and his right hand instinctively latches onto the hilt of his sword. His fear is irrational, a mistake that only the mind could have conceived; he fixes his sight on Akashi, who doesn't do so much as undergo a metamorphosis to become an overtly horrifying creature. Akashi simply talks and walks around.

"As such," Akashi says in finality, "Kouki will be staying in my chambers tonight. I'm afraid I cannot inconvenience any of the palace's residents without warning."

Momoi inadvertently utters, "Oh." She shakes her head to steer clear of any inappropriate thoughts and says, "Of course, Akashi-kun. I'll be leaving now." She bows politely and proceeds to the doors, closing them gently behind her. The room reverts to its quiescent state.

"W-what?" Furihata manages to exclaim in the midst of trying to regain his composure. "W-with due respect, I don't understand why I have to stay with you."

As if Furihata's statement has been drowned by his tremors, Akashi pays no heed and snaps his fingers. Furihata struggles to catch his breath as the world around him whirls, the interior of the throne room fading into gray as another location takes its place. Furihata falls on his knees when the motion comes to a halt.

He blinks back the tears forming in his eyes from the wind and stares open-mouthed at the change of surroundings. They're in the space between two four-poster beds that are placed in opposite ends of the capacious room. A fragrant scent drifts right under Furihata's nose, and he listens to the faint lulling music that has come from nowhere and is seemingly only there as an echo of what was there yesterday.

"It's far too late for any arguments," Akashi murmurs behind Furihata, startling the latter. He holds his hand out, intending to pull Furihata up without the use of his magic, but Furihata hesitates.

Akashi withdraws his hand and purses his lips. "You're peculiar, Kouki. There are so many things about you that do not seem right."

"N-no offense," Furihata falters, using one hand as a leverage to rise from the floor. He stands up and shifts from one foot to another, assaying the condition of his knees. "B-but I think I could say the same for you…Akashi-kun."

"None taken," Akashi says, walking past him and towards the cot on the left side of the room. His voice still rings clear in spite of the growing distance. "I intend to inquire further about your journey to our world, but that will be for tomorrow. You can rest for now."

Furihata bends his head in assent and begins treading heavily towards his own bed. The pauldrons press on his shoulder blades almost painfully, and his eyes widen in recognition of his dilemma. Furihata looks wildly at his environment as he pulls on the pieces of metal only to identify his attempts as futile. Halfway to his destination, he turns around rapidly and blurts, "Um, A-Akashi-kun, I may need your help."

Akashi has already changed into his sleepwear and is tucking himself in the covers. Still, he calls out, "What is it, Kouki?"

"…I have no idea how to remove this…thing," Furihata says rather asininely, but he corrects himself soon after, the Necromancer's lessons looming over his head. "Armor! I meant armor. Right. I-I don't know how to take these plates off."

He hears a sigh before magic knocks into him rapidly and replaces his gear with more comfortable pajamas. Instinctively, Furihata flails his arms to cover himself, but he realizes that Akashi is not looking at him.

"Rest well, Kouki," Akashi murmurs, his consciousness already slipping away. "Prepare for an interrogation in a few hours."

Although Akashi's eyes are already closed, Furihata nods, stuttering, "D-duly noted." He tiptoes towards his bed and slips under the covers as humanely silent as he could. The blankets still rustle under his fingertips, but Akashi does not stir.

He finds that he has never lay in a bed as comfortable as this before, and his thoughts wander toward questions about his sister's life without him. The throbbing of his throat begins again, and he forces it to stop, squeezing his eyes shut.

Eventually, Furihata's breaths even out, and he relaxes on the bed. Before he can doze off, he notices that the lights only went out when he has completely stopped squirming.

.

.

Cold.

Water.

Coldwatercoldwatercoldwatercoldwater_freezing—_

Furihata gasps and immediately regrets the mistake of letting the water fill his mouth.

The thing about nightmares is that you are aware that they are figments of imagination, yet you let them drag your senses away and plunge you deeper into the dark recesses of your mind. It is you who makes yourself vulnerable. You let yourself be willed by images that will never happen, almost as if you want to be taken away.

In this dream, Furihata does not surface for more than a minute. He strains to keep his eyes open, to keep himself awake in spite of the fact that he is asleep. He coughs and coughs and coughs, until shadows dance around the corners of his vision and the silhouette of a hand dips in the water.

He reaches for it and inhales, long and deep, just as he used to before.

Perhaps it is not a dream, after all. Perhaps it is a memory.

"You've come back," a familiar voice says, devoid of any emotion. Furihata's eyes flutter, and he grasps that he is no longer damp. He is dressed in his armor again, sitting in front of a coffee table. It's glass. There is a glinting metallic object resting on it.

Before he can reach for and examine it, a cold hand rests on his shoulder, startling him. Furihata looks back and catches a glimpse of the Necromancer.

Furihata stands up in an instant, and the interior of the Administrators' HQ vanishes.

The Necromancer steps forward, looking up at him. "You are here because I am delivering a message from the world you once knew."

Furihata opens his mouth, his head still swirling with confusion. "What do you mean…? I-it's not possible, right?"

"Furihata-kun," the Necromancer says, "do you know what a necromancer does?"

The question makes Furihata stagger backward. "…I suppose it's just a title. Someone to welcome entrants to your world…or something."

The Necromancer shakes his head. "A necromancer communicates with and hails the dead, only in our universe the role has been slightly altered." He flicks his wrist and they're back in Akashi's room, where Furihata can see himself on the bed, snoring softly. "This is real, Furihata-kun, and I assure you that you will remember this conversation as clear as a day."

In wonder, Furihata slowly pokes his sleeping self's foot, and he takes his finger back when he sees himself stir.

"As I was saying earlier," the Necromancer clears his throat, regaining Furihata's attention, "my role in this universe has been changed. I relay messages from the other world to this one, but inhabitants of this world can never be able to respond."

Furihata's breath hitches. "Why?"

The Necromancer shrugs. "I don't know. It has been that way for many millennia, and always will be."

They hover around Akashi's room, unseen, until the Necromancer speaks again. "We don't have much time left. You need to close your eyes to listen to the message."

Furihata does as he instructs, eager to hear his friends' voices again, until he remembers—he cannot hear his sister.

"Don't worry," the Necromancer assures him, ridding him of any unpleasant thoughts. "You won't just hear the message. You'll see the sender."

Once he calms down, he's thrust into a new landscape. Furihata jerks when the cold rain pelts his face, and he surveys the area until he sees Hyuuga on his knees, in front of a monument. Hyuuga is gripping the edges of what Furihata recognizes as the marble sculpture of his bust, and he recoils when he hears Hyuuga crying.

"You foolish brat," Hyuuga barks out, his fingers tracing the inscription beneath the sculpture. _The hero of our ages, Furihata Kouki._ "You goddamned foolish brat. Is this what you wanted, huh? You wanted to die so you can have your fucking pedestal?"

Furihata kneels beside him and tries to put his hand on his back. He flinches when he discovers that his hand sinks right through Hyuuga's figure.

"We don't always get what we want, but _goddamn_ did you get what you wanted," Hyuuga laughs bitterly, his anger flaring through hiccups that can no longer be suppressed. Hyuuga withdraws his hand to muffle the sounds that come from his mouth, and he bites on his finger as he shakes violently.

All Furihata desires to do is make Hyuuga stop. All of the accusations falling from his lips do not matter—it is the fact that Hyuuga is sobbing for someone as unworthy as he is that has Furihata holding his head in his hands and wondering if it had been right to have left Hyuuga like this.

Hyuuga sniffs and wipes his red-rimmed eyes with his sleeves. "You know what? Fine. I understand. You think you have to save this world to think that you have even a tiny shrapnel of self-worth. Alright, I get it.

"What I don't get is how easy it was for you to say goodbye." Furihata shakes his head in denial, but Hyuuga does not look at him. "All those years I've been lying to you…it was all to keep you safe. You _don't_ sacrifice yourself to save the world. They have to force you to kill yourself—at least that's what the records about the Aperture say. But you were always a special case, weren't you?"

Furihata furrows his eyebrows, unable to understand.

"Anyway," Hyuuga rasps, his voice hoarse. "I'm coming to accept it now. I think. I came here to say I'm sorry because the Hyuuga you had known was only half of the Hyuuga that lived. I'm sorry because I wasn't as great of a friend as I thought I was. It's funny when you think about it—I amount to nothing."

_No,_ Furihata whispers. _No, you don't._

"Suzume's safe now, if you're out there listening. Riko's taken her in and is homeschooling her. The rest of us are still pretty shaken up. Me? I'm fucked up, to say the least, in case it isn't obvious in the way I'm talking to a sculpture. Fucking brilliant, don't you think?

"But everything's okay. You'll be in the history books someday, believe me. And even if I want to beat you to a bloody pulp if you weren't already, I'm proud of you, Furihata. I just wish that I could've said it when you were still here."

Hyuuga's knees are wobbly when he gets up from the ground. He coughs twice before touching the sculpture. "I'm proud of you, kid. You'll be…you'll be back, someday."

He walks away, stumbling on his feet and getting back up again. Even from far away, his returning sobs are audible.

Furihata does not rise from the ground. He does not mind the wetness on his face, either.

.

The world spins again, the Necromancer's shadows swirling around him. Furihata buries his face in his hands, incapable of containing himself for any longer. The warmth of the Lower World is no longer there with him, and he seeks the fondness of home.

"It is not your home anymore," the Necromancer tells him, his hands still hanging by his sides. He does not offer the comfort of touch. "I am merely showing you those who wish to speak with you. I hope you wouldn't assume that you'd be able to return."

"…Why do you think I'm crying, Necromancer?" Furihata mumbles, finally getting a grip on himself now that the Necromancer has brought him back to his bleak cavern. When Furihata catches a glimpse of him, he sees that the Necromancer has drawn back at the sound of his label.

Furihata gazes at him in curiosity. "'Necromancer' isn't actually your name, is it?"

The Necromancer stares back at him, blue eyes hardened by unfeeling. "…No. Long ago…I was once what I am not now."

"Tell me, then," Furihata says softly. "I don't want to call you by something that you aren't."

"Necromancer is fine," the ghastly boy stiffly says.

"Your true name," Furihata insists.

"I don't remember it. It's been many eras since I last heard it."

"Please, Necromancer…I've been told many lies when I was still—" _Alive,_ Furihata almost makes a slip –"in the Lower World. If there is anything that I don't miss, it's that."

The Necromancer eyes him silently. He is so young, so seemingly innocent—Furihata does not know how he could have existed for such a long time, or how he could have managed being alone, delving into the darkness without someone to guide him out of it.

Finally, the Necromancer says, "…It's Kuroko."

"K…Kuroko," Furihata echoes, the unfamiliar name rolling across his tongue. He forgets about Hyuuga momentarily and replies, "Kuroko…thank you. For telling me."

The Necromancer—no, Kuroko nods impassively, but there is a light in his eyes that wasn't there before. He presses two fingers to Furihata's forehead and says, "It's time to wake up, Furihata-kun."

Furihata involuntarily closes his eyes in this reality and opens them in another.

.

.

"Furihata-kun. Furihata-kun!"

The incessant calling of his name eventually rouses him from his sleep, and he ends up kicking his covers and whomever was waking him up. Furihata mumbles incoherently, looking around to focus his vision, and he sees a pixie pinching her nose.

"F-Furihata-kun," the pixie says in a nosey voice, still clutching her septum, "you're required at the baths in this instant."

Furihata immediately sits up and gasps at the pixie's condition. "I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do that, I just—"

"It's fine, Furihata-kun," the pixie mumbles in reassurance, waving his worry away with her tiny hands. "Midorima-kun is just around the corner, and I'm sure he'll patch me up in no time. Now, off you go!"

"U-um," says Furihata, who gets out of the bed and flinches as his feet touch the cold floor. "Let me accompany you to Mi…Midorima-kun, at the least."

The pixie shakes her head, the glitter falling from the twinkling strands of her hair. When Furihata peers under her cupped hand, he doesn't see any blood, and it provides him a little bit of relief. "No, no, Furihata-kun, it's fine—Akashi-kun will be furious if you don't appear on time!"

"I'm sure he'd…understand," Furihata tells her, neglecting the maybes that resound in his head. If anything, the chances of Akashi reprimanding him for having hurt a creature over whom he has jurisdiction would be much higher than the chances of Akashi berating him for his tardiness.

Still, he hides a quiver when he thinks about the prospect of testing Akashi's temper.

Furihata shrugs the thought away for now and holds his palm out for the pixie to perch on. "I'll take you to Midorima-kun, okay? I'm really sorry about accidentally hitting you, I was just surprised."

The pixie nods reluctantly at first, but she lands on Furihata's palm and sits, cross-legged. "…Once again, it's fine, Furihata-kun. But thank you."

.

After many turns around corners and wrong rooms entered, Furihata finally locates Midorima's clinic at the far side of the palace. He knocks on the door twice before deeming his entrance into the clinic as permitted. The pixie soon lies asleep on his palm, shedding glitter even in her unconsciousness.

"Midorima-kun…?" Furihata slowly walks towards the heart of the clinic. There are rows of bookshelves that filter the sunlight streaming in the window, and in the center of the room a glowing crystal floats. Furihata stares at it in amazement, blinking at the ever-changing colors of the crystal.

What perplexes him is the fact that he doesn't see any medical tools lying around the clinic. Although this world greatly differs from what was once his, there should be at least one instrument that he could recognize.

Before he could register the sound of approaching footsteps, Furihata hears someone say, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Furihata whirls around and sputters, "I-I accidentally kicked a pixie while she was waking me up, and I think her nose is broken."

The man before him pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, his peculiar green mane illuminated by the radiance of the sun. Even through his thick glasses, it is apparent that the man's eyes are beautiful.

"…Are you Midorima-kun?" Furihata inquires quietly, only now noticing the tape around the man's fingers. _How odd,_ he muses. The man must have suffered from injuries on his hands.

"I am," the man affirms, stepping forward to examine the pixie lying on Furihata's palm. Midorima huffs and unravels the tape from his fingers. "You must've been so careless in your waking moments. I don't see how anyone could hurt somebody by simply being roused."

Furihata swallows and distracts himself with Midorima's fingers. To his surprise, his hands are without flaws. "I…I'm really sorry. She was waking me up and…I kind of had a dream. No, an encounter with the Necromancer." The name tastes foreign on his tongue now that Kuroko's proper introduction of himself has gone past.

"If she was waking you up, then the matter would have been urgent," Midorima says, reaching for the crystal. Furihata jumps back when the crystal begins to emit visible blue waves that coil around Midorima's arm. When the brightness subsides, the waves sink right in Midorima's skin.

Midorima's touch on the pixie's head is fleeting. "If the matter _was_ urgent, then I believe that you should not be here concerning yourself with matters of less importance."

"…I had to see to it that the pixie was okay," Furihata meekly rebuts.

"It's a minor injury, nothing that requires a person of assistance," Midorima says. The pixie's eyes flutter when Midorima retracts his hands, and she leaps out of Furihata's palm, leaving remnants of glitter. "Akashi would be disappointed in your warped sense of priority. You are a newcomer, aren't you?"

Furihata opens his mouth in astonishment. "H-How did you…I mean, yes, I just arrived. If I run to the baths, I couldn't be that late. But, um, I don't really know where the baths are."

The sigh that he hears from Midorima is one of acquiescence with what seems to be Furihata's cluelessness. Furihata argues in the back of his mind that it's not his fault that he barely knows what to do in this uncharted world. "You'd best not be any tardier, then," Midorima says.

Midorima still hasn't rewound the tape around his fingers, but he presses on Furihata's forehead in the same way that Kuroko did when he sent Furihata back to his body. Before Midorima can send Furihata to another place, Furihata blurts, "A-Ah, I'm Furihata Kouki, by the way!"

"I know," Midorima replies, unperturbed. "It's a…pleasure to meet you."

Furihata is about to say the same, but a brilliant flash of light pierces his eyes.

Just like that, he disappears.

.

"You're late."

Furihata stumbles face-first into the water and emerges soon after, coughing up the liquid that he unintentionally swallowed. When he's finished heaving, he steers clear of the droplets on his eyelids and looks up at Akashi's figure.

Akashi is in his robes, imperial gold threads sown into the side to resemble wings. He wipes off the water that was splashed on his cheek. "I believe I sent someone to tell you that you are needed here."

"I-I'm sorry," Furihata keeps his head down to signify that he has quite a bit of shame left. His main reason, however, is that he intends to avoid Akashi's gaze to make himself less of a fool. "I h-had to bring her to the infirmary—"

He's hushed when Akashi summons a message written on air. "Your apology is not necessary. Shintarou notified me of your…detour. I may need to talk to Tetsuya about your schedule. We wouldn't want your duties to overlap with other activities."

When Akashi is greeted with silence, he waves his hand to dissipate the message. "You might know Shintarou as the Healer, and Tetsuya as the Necromancer."

_Tetsuya?_ Even Akashi knows Kuroko's first name. Furihata doesn't seem to be very surprised since Akashi governs this world. If he were Akashi, he'd be damned if he couldn't memorize the names of this world's inhabitants.

But he could never be Akashi. Judging by his condition now, it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that Furihata would eternally remain terrified of Akashi's mere presence.

"Do you recall what I said about you?" Akashi inquires, silently observing Furihata.

The brunet frowns and in turn reddens at the fact that he just scowled in front of Akashi. If possible, he would incinerate himself to avoid displeasing Akashi more. "I-I don't."

Tucking his hands into the sleeves of his robes, Akashi says, "You should know when to correct me, Kouki. I apologize for not being specific. I told you that you were…peculiar, to which, if I recall correctly, you responded with a statement about how we are alike in our sentiments toward each other."

Prompted by Akashi's stare, Furihata stammers, "Y-yes. You're right."

"Don't take my words lightly," Akashi advises him, his expression turning sour at Furihata's continuous tacit assent. At this, Furihata swallows, wanting nothing but to evaporate as soon as he can to escape the unmistakable glare that Akashi is sending in his direction.

"I-I don't," Furihata says in what he already calls an act of defiance. He still hasn't gained the capacity to lose his stutter while conversing with Akashi, but his exhaustion from trembling in front of the Upper World's king is slowly catching up to him. The pent-up frustration from his fear is taunting him to stand up to Akashi, but he doubts that he would last a second.

Akashi's gaze softens. "I can see you're trying to improve your speech, and I commend you for that. But let's put that issue behind for now; I want you to know why you are, in every sense of the word, special."

When Akashi smiles at him, Furihata senses the heat spread across his cheeks. The fact that he turns pale in Akashi's company doesn't help his cause—he can discern that Akashi smiles even more at the sight of the red tint that easily became apparent on his face. In the corners of his mind, he blames Akashi for not using a synonym that is less flattering than what he had uttered.

"As I was saying," Akashi says, "you are…different because you were never meant to come here, and you were never supposed to be what you are now."

"How…how so?" Furihata nearly states a perfect sentence, but he shivers due to his prolonged stay in the water. Akashi must have noticed—he offers his hand to help Furihata up, his look very much expectant. Wordlessly, Furihata decides to take it, every bit triumphant at his milestone, and sighs inwardly at Akashi's warmth.

Akashi steadies Furihata as soon as he gets dragged back to the shore. As Akashi conjures a cloth for him, Furihata looks around his surroundings. He and Akashi are alone on the fringe of land beside a lake, but his captivation by the crystal clear waters and the wildlife that thrive in them overwhelms his anxiety around the odd-eyed redhead.

"Kouki, here," Akashi hands him a woven beige shawl, and he nods in gratitude. When he has rubbed his sides enough to have accumulated a considerable and comfortable amount of warmth, Akashi speaks again. "Let me ask you a question, so as not to let myself be the only one who's engaged in this conversation. What exactly did you do to get here?"

"What…did I do?" Furihata repeats, letting Akashi's words sink in for a minute. He wraps the shawl around him tighter. "I…T-There was an Apocalypse in my—their world, and my friends and I gleaned that the only way to stop it was to sacrifice someone."

"And you volunteered?"

"And I volunteered," Furihata affirms, ducking his head. Strangely enough, he doesn't take pride in the fact that he is now recognized as his previous world's savior. He still feels hollow.

It is then that Akashi murmurs, "Only those who are coerced into giving their lives are permitted to enter this world. You should never have been given a choice in your death."

A breeze blows across the stretch of the shore, following a haphazard route in the atmosphere and making the waters dance. Furihata suppresses the tremor of his hands and says, "W-what do you mean, 'coerced'?"

"I'll leave it at that at the moment," Akashi replies tersely. "For now, I'll orient you with our whereabouts. Do you know where we are now?"

"…No."

Akashi hums in satisfaction. "Exactly. Before I tell you the purpose of our visit to this lake, however, I'll ask you one more thing, if that would be alright."

Furihata discreetly says, "Mm. That would be…no problem."

"What do you want the most?"

In the horizon, the sound of feathers rustling against each other serves as the accompaniment for the crashing of waves against the rocks._Seagulls,_ Furihata recalls Momoi telling him about some animals that roam the Upper World. Furihata remembers asking her how they never got lost, and she laughed, saying that they have their own ways of navigating the world, unlike humans who still wander even in the company of their maps and compasses.

The question catches Furihata off-guard, and he fleetingly thinks that he is still human for feeling so lost. "W-what?" He flails his arms in realization of his mistake and accidentally lets go of the shawl. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be disrespectful—"

"Kouki, don't fret," Akashi's voice is soothing albeit the power that emanates from it. "What is one thing that you desire above everything else?"

Pondering over the several options that he has for an answer would presumably only make his head hurt and confound him. Furihata goes with his instinct and responds, "I…want to be with my sister. I want to watch her grow up."

Akashi's stare gives away his perusal of Furihata's reply.

"You're lying."

Furihata is taken back by Akashi's statement. "E…Excuse me?"

"You're lying," Akashi iterates, emphasizing each syllable. The ends of his robes flutter along the wind.

"I'm not," Furihata protests, his fear of Akashi being overpowered by another emotion yet again. He takes his time to discover what it is, and he's confronted with something that he isn't entirely familiar of.

He's angry.

"H-how would you know, Akashi-kun?" he exclaims, not bothering to cover his breaking voice. His fists are trembling at his sides, and he can't control the tears welling in the corners of his eyes. "How would _you_ know?"

Akashi remains unbothered by Furihata's outburst. "Because your desire is what this world is for. Whatever you wish for is this world's answer to you. Do you know why you were dressed in armor when you arrived?"

When Furihata does not speak, Akashi continues, "Armors were worn by humans long before your time to protect themselves in battle. Armors belonged to those who were trained to kill and schooled in the art of war. In humans' perspective, war is where the cowards and the heroes are determined."

Furihata exhales shakily, the color draining from his face as Akashi says, "Now, Kouki—what do you think you want the most?"

In spite of the cold sea breeze, his palms perspire. "I—"

"Say it," Akashi commands him, his expression almost apathetic. "Don't hesitate to tell me, in all honesty."

Furihata swallows audibly. His bones are rattling inside him. "I," he starts, "I…I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to have courage, at least once."

"Good," is the only thing that Akashi says despite the audacity that Furihata's disclosure required. Furihata should be offended that one of his secrets has been easily brushed off by Akashi as unimportant—he surprisingly isn't. "Now, tell me: are you afraid of me, Kouki? Are you still quivering when I am around?"

The brunet furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "I-I am. Akashi-kun, what exactly are you talking about?"

Akashi's lips thin into a line, and displeasure taints Akashi's features. "I hope that you are trying to understand what I am insinuating, and that you are starting to think for yourself rather than having everybody else tell you what it is that you should think about."

"I…I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," Akashi remarks and fixes the collar of his robes. "I will let you off this time. What I'm saying is, you are peculiar because you haven't fully received what you want yet. That has never happened before…with the exception of a single instance."

From the way Akashi says it, Furihata can assume that the statement does not warrant another question. Furihata blinks and sputters in disbelief instead. "I'm…I'm a mistake of the universe?"

"Fate likes to toy with us," Akashi says, bitterness lacing his voice. "I wouldn't say that you're the first to have been played with."

The water reaches Furihata's ankles when it washes off the shore, and he does not show interest in the grains of sand that have lodged themselves in his toenails. He looks up at Akashi—rather, he forces himself to look at Akashi, to stare him in the eyes, to prove that he could at least do this amidst all of the others that he couldn't.

"You said something about…coercion and death and how I was never meant to be let in your world," Furihata slowly says, as if savoring the words he could utter in front of Akashi. In truth, he is treading foreign waters, and he isn't sure if he has been granted the freedom to ask what he wishes to know. "Akashi-kun…I-I'm pushing my luck here, but what else makes me _unworthy_ of being here?"

The demand in his tone brings about a noticeable difference in Akashi's expression, but Akashi does not bat an eye. Now that Furihata examines Akashi's face thoroughly, he sees a boy who is far too young to have been appointed as king. Perhaps they are of the same age—no matter what similarities Furihata finds between them, it still feels as though they are worlds apart.

Akashi raises his chin and says, "This lake is meant to cleanse you of anything distinctly human you have left inside of you. Your blood will be taken away, but you will still function. Two things that you will get to maintain is your memory and part of your physical form. It will stay with you for as long as you exist in this world."

Furihata opens his mouth to ask him how the lake has anything to do with his previous question, but just as he is about to deliver his first syllable, Akashi pinches something invisible in the air and drags it along. Furihata gasps when he realizes that his mouth has been magically sewn shut.

"You are to be rid of anything that humans have used to corrupt you," Akashi declares, "and you will be stripped of your identity as a human because humans do not deserve you. The requirement to enter this world of dreams and immortality is to die."

Still struggling, Furihata attempts to pry his lips open with his own hands, and he stumbles back when they open on their own accord. "I _died_," he utters, wide-eyed. "I _died,_ Akashi-kun."

"Yes, you died," Akashi says. His face looks grim. "But you sacrificed yourself. In order to enter this world, you shouldn't have offered your life. You should have been murdered."

.

.

**to be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

a/n: a little bit out of sched bc of life in general ;u; i'm going to be honest here - i had the whole fic typed out on evernote, and it turns out that the last part (which is a pretty huge chunk of the fic) hasn't been saved. so...expect some delay on future chapters. i'm really, really sorry about that. it was a mistake on my part to trust the autosave feature. (also, the m-dashes have disappeared in some sections, so...)

anyhow, here's chapter 3. i'm on tumblr at exordia-co-vu (replace dashes with periods) if anyone wants to talk/sob about kurobas' final chapter c:

extra notes: **mentions of character death, sexism, and rape**. if any of these triggers you, i'd say that the description is very, very vague, but i'd advise you to take caution. i'm well aware that i'm giving away some essential details, but i hope that this chapter isn't in any way offensive.

* * *

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**three**

.

It is a well-known fact that exposure therapy is one of the most effective treatments for people with anxiety disorders. Talk to a therapist about your fears, develop a treatment plan, and expose yourself to scenarios that involve those that terrify you, with each situation being more intense than the last. Hypothetically, patients gradually become more comfortable with the incidence of their fears if they encounter them repeatedly.

What they don't tell people is that fear isn't something that you combat by facing it many times. It cripples your mind—being used to it doesn't mean that it's gone.

.

When Furihata regains consciousness, he is drowning yet again.

He should be conditioned to expect the liquid filling his lungs by now, after his experiences of suffocating under bodies of water without knowing how he ended up there. Furihata's reflex is to swim upwards, to get himself to the surface, but his body loses all sense of coordination and he remains still, eyes open and bubbles floating from his nares.

The moment he realizes that he cannot breathe is also the moment when he actually stops breathing. Furihata brings his hands to his neck and gasps, swallowing a mouthful of cold freshwater.

_Shutdownshutdownshutdown—_he tells his mind in panic, refusing to be hauled into overdrive before he can drown in exhaustion. Turning his head, Furihata assesses his surroundings—nothing but darkness—and whimpers silently when he finds that he cannot kickstart with his feet. The last memory that he has is of Akashi whispering something unintelligible to him before he blacked out.

Akashi. His eyes have always been knowing, and to him Furihata is probably an open book. Akashi's eyes can see through anyone.

Akashi. He's always said that Furihata is afraid of him, hasn't he? Akashi has always known that Furihata is too far from reaching what he wants.

_Breathe._

A glimmer brushes past the corners of Furihata's vision, and he tries to follow the dim light but is eventually met with more of the sprawling darkness. He holds his breath, wary that his chest is nothing but a space that's empty save for the pain.

But he can't die here. He's already dead, anyway.

The soft murmur comes again. _Breathe._

He does not do so.

_Breathe,_ the voice insists, impatience dripping from its echo.

Furihata shakes his head, keeping his mouth shut.

Finally, there's anger.

**_Breathe._**

**_._**

Furihata gasps for air, letting the water flood his mouth. He's expecting to choke, to suffocate, to suffer—but the only thing he does is revel in the taste of life as it comes surging down his system like a spark. Focusing his vision on the distance ahead, he breathes normally as he would on land and instinctively reaches for the spot under his jaw.

Lines. Depressions. Folded surfaces.

"It's about time you learn how to follow instructions, Furihata-kun," the voice from before sighs in relief, and Furihata jerks back when a creature swims towards him. Half of the creature's body is similar to a human's, but the lower half is something else—it's shimmering under the rays that pierce through the water, with plates that glisten with an orange glow.

The creature, upon noticing Furihata's look of wonder, points to himself and says, "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Kise Ryouta, and I'm what you call a merman."

Furihata raises his hands shakily. "U-Um, it's nice to meet you…Kise-kun. But what's on your…"

"Oh, this?" he dives in and waves the lower part of his body. "Ah...you're probably not familiar with fish. This is a tail, which I use to navigate through the lake. You've got legs and I've got this. Pretty awesome, huh?"

"Oh, um, yeah," is the only thing Furihata says, wary that his inquisitiveness might do more harm than good. Besides, Kise is talking nonchalantly even if he has only met Furihata, and he already knows what the brunet's name is. "Just a second, Kise-kun—how did you know my name?"

Kise blinks at him in surprise and laughs good-naturedly. "Really? You're with Akashicchi and you don't know what he's capable of? Hm, you're truly interesting, Furihata-kun."

_Akashicchi,_ Furihata echoes in his head, curious about how the suffix came to be and admittedly amused at Kise's endearment. If what Kise says is true, then it must be Akashi who sent him here, perhaps for the purpose of 'bathing'—that is, to cleanse himself of any humanity he has left in him. In reflex, Furihata wraps his arms around himself in hopes that he could at least retain some of his previous identity. He's not certain if he'll sense something leaving him hollow, but he doesn't want to let go of what makes him himself.

Upon seeing his action, Kise quirks a questioning eyebrow and says, "I see—so you're interesting because you're weird. You really shouldn't do that, you know. It doesn't make any difference."

Furihata shrugs and drops his arms to his sides. He opens his mouth to ask something, but Kise beats him to it, swimming upwards and grinning at the light that frames his face. "Your time's up, Furihata-kun. You can head to the surface now, since you're all ready for this world."

The blonde holds his hand out, and Furihata takes it without any inhibition. Kise's hands are scaly and cold, to the extent that Furihata has to suppress a flinch that runs through him. When he looks at Kise, he sees golden eyes that are trying to find the way out of the dark depths of the lake. Something tells Furihata that Kise originally did not belong here but had to hide—from what, Furihata does not know.

"Come on, Furihata-kun," Kise startles and pulls him out of his thoughts again by tightening his grip on Furihata's hand. As insistent as Kise's tone is, Furihata can't help but wonder why Kise is alone albeit being someone who appears to be sociable, at least more than how Furihata is. Akashi's words come back to him almost in an effort to annoy, but the last of them makes Furihata squirm at Kise.

The brunet squeezes Kise's hand in return for the purpose of holding on. "…Kise-kun, before I go—can I ask you something?"

Kise shrugs, saying, "Sure. But you should make it quick; Akashicchi's probably waiting for you, especially since you haven't gone through the rites yet."

_What rites—_Furihata wants to ask, but he bites the inside of his cheek to remind himself that the clock is ticking and he doesn't want to further disappoint Akashi due to more of his tardiness. He looks up at the surface, the waves rolling and rippling over his head softly instead of angrily. Perhaps this is what people who drown see—once they come to terms with the fact that they are well under the water, they see something beautiful in the place of something deadly.

"Ah, well," Furihata begins with a bit of hesitation, "Akashi-kun told me something about how you—we came to this world. Something about being…murdered."

He jolts when Kise suddenly bursts into laughter, the kind that's hollow and bitter and pitifully hoarse. "…You're asking me how I _died_. You could save the tact for later, Furihata-kun. I don't turn away from the straightforward types."

In spite of Kise's insouciance about the issue, Furihata can't help but feel sorry for him and his lies about not caring about his departure. "W-well, yes. I'm sure that I'm intruding, but—"

"It's fine, really," Kise waves him off, clearing his throat in the process. "For starters, you could say that where I live is a huge hint." He gestures to his surroundings, where there is nothing else but bubbles and the dark.

"…You're…alone," Furihata offers.

Kise nods, his expression laced with a mixture of nostalgia and sadness. Maybe there's no difference anymore. "Right, I am. I'm away from everybody else, in a place where it's difficult to find me."

"And you wanted this?" Furihata looks around, his hand still in Kise's. "Kise-kun—did you want to be alone?"

He gets a smile in return—all front teeth glistening from the light refracted by the water. "I don't think it's a matter of wanting to be alone. It's just that I wanted to be where no one else could possibly follow—well, except for those who have to cleanse themselves the first time they get here. Other than that, no one can see me. When you leave, you won't find me ever again."

"But-"

Kise continues, not mindful of Furihata's interjection. When Furihata thoroughly looks at him, he sees hair spun from gold, a face that's too impeccable to belong to desolation, and a man who seems as if he ought to live somewhere else. Something tells him that Kise must not be here but chose otherwise anyway. "I was popular, once. Don't get me wrong-I loved the concern that I received from people who have so much going on in their lives, and I was glad that even if I was only one person I was in many people's thoughts.

"The thing about some people who referred to me as their idol was that they became too engrossed that their 'love' turned to something that would destroy and consume them later on. I was only, hm, I think I was eighteen when some people began following me, to the point that I had no personal space anymore." Kise chuckles and shakes his head at the memory. "Now that I think about it, sometimes it's hilarious when they take pictures of me during my restroom breaks."

Furihata bites his lip when Kise exhales shakily, his eyes glistening. Still, Kise smiles, baring his teeth and crinkling his eyes almost painstakingly. The brunet has to suppress a blush when he keeps eye contact with Kise-after all, how could he maintain his composure if he's confronted by someone who catches everybody's breaths away?

Bubbles float from Kise's mouth when he speaks. "You know, Furihata-kun, it's never easy to talk about this-to talk about how I died. Even if it's been an eternity since I last felt human sensations, I can still remember how wrong the atmosphere was when I was walking home. It was after a photo shoot when I knew that somebody followed my trail."

"Why did they kill you?" Furihata blurts, his anger flaring at the unfairness of it all. He sees Kise, a boy who could've grown up to have a family. He could've had the chance to age and lose that beauty of his on the surface but still have his radiance in his wide eyes. Now that he's seconds away from hearing Kise's recollection of his end, everyone whom he has met in the Upper World stare back at him with futures not glimpsed, chances not taken, and lives that disappeared no matter how these people appeared to be innocent.

They didn't deserve to die.

Kise inhales sharply when he notices Furihata tensing up, as if his body is preparing him to cry. "Furihata-kun, I still don't know what I did wrong. But it felt so painful-to have that blade behind me, to know that I could've been saved had I not been on a dark street."

Furihata tastes something salty on his lips as he says, "It's wrong. You shouldn't be here."

"But I am," Kise smiles sadly. "Furihata-kun, please don't cry for me. It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry," Furihata shakes his head, letting go of Kise's hand only to wipe his eyes, but he realizes that he is in the water and it doesn't make any difference if he lets his tears fall freely. "I'm sorry, Kise-kun. It's too unfair."

"You don't have to take the blame for everything," assures Kise, who rests his palms on Furihata's shoulders to keep them from shaking. His hands are cold, so cold-Furihata wonders how warm they would have been if Kise was still alive.

When Furihata has stifled his sobs enough to come to terms with the reality of it all, he looks Kise in the eye and hears him say, "I think that's what your weakness is. You don't have to apologize for things that are beyond your control."

He's about to say something in return, perhaps something about how being sorry is the most that he could do especially since he isn't capable of doing most things-but he keeps his lips plastered and nods, acknowledging Kise's note. He's right, when Furihata ponders on it for a few heartbeats.

"Ah, I've kept you here for far too long. I messed up your eyes, too. Sorry for that."

Rather than feeling Kise's hand in his once again, Furihata winces at the constriction of his chest and subsequently begins to suffocate as he looks to Kise for answers. He tries to open his mouth but ultimately regrets it when he swallows the water and chokes on it, his efforts to breathe through his newly acquired gills rendered futile. The lake presses on him as if it is too intent on getting rid of him.

Beside Furihata, Kise's figure is slowly vanishing-Furihata isn't able to determine if it is his vision surrendering to unconsciousness or Kise's impending disappearance.

Nevertheless, Kise is beautiful even when he fades away. "Hold onto my hand, Furihata-kun. It's the only way you'll get back to the shore."

Furihata nods, sensing every part of him turning into lead.

"This is goodbye," Kise muses, his voice barely reaching Furihata in his transition into the darkness. "But it's an honor to have met you."

There is nothing that Furihata can say because even his lips have given up on him.

Before he can truly 'drown', Furihata flutters his eyes one last time to imprint Kise's image into his mind, to tuck his voice away in the corner of his mind so that he could remember someone who locked himself away where nobody could trace his footsteps. The more he attempts to memorize every detail of Kise's smile, though, the more his grasp on Kise's expressions fades away.

Kise seems to have read his motive from the way he blinks to ward off the blackout, because he offers him one last smile, one that doesn't quite reach up to the peak of his cheekbones but stretches across his face to indicate that he hasn't been this happy for so long. "In spite of that, I hope I'll see you again, Furihatacchi. You're probably one of the people who are worth staying in the light for."

Furihata breathes, long and deep, and lets the water take him away.

Kise's memory dissipates into the nothingness in an instant, but Furihata holds on to the way he felt when Kise called him with another suffix.

.

.

At the exact moment that his feet touch the sand, Akashi charges toward him.

Furihata barely has the time to yelp and scream a mouthful of questions at his aggressor, but his hand automatically finds its way to the hilt of his sword. He doesn't register how impossible it is that he could've had that reaction time, but the way the sword weighs feels so natural to him, and he blocks Akashi's own weapon, the clash resounding with a shrill clang.

His eyes widen at the proximity of Akashi's own. Akashi stares at him, hands pressing on his own sword to weaken Furihata's defense.

When they both step back as they realize that neither of them would succumb, it is Furihata who attacks first, raising his sword above Akashi's head. His mind is overwhelmed by his bewilderment at his newfound expertise on swordplay and at the speed at which his body chooses to fight instead of give in. As fast as his reflexes are, Akashi moves too quickly and aims for his side. Furihata steps to the side and avoids the blade narrowly.

Akashi seems to be impressed by this, judging from the way his eyes radiate with something unknown to Furihata. When he positions his arm to slash across Furihata's chest, Furihata recognizes the threat posed on him and grabs the blade, only registering the foolishness of his action after his impulse has taken over. Akashi makes a surprised sound when Furihata doesn't let go of his sword and releases his hold on its hilt too late.

Furihata pants as he points the tip of his blade towards Akashi's throat.

The brunet's palm starts to bleed as Akashi gently pushes the blade away from himself. They hold each other's gazes for a moment before Furihata falls to his knees, cradling his head in his hands.

"This is your true strength, Kouki," Akashi calmly says, his tone sounding similar to the one he possesses when he has not engaged in combat. "You live off of impulse, and it is where you find your courage. When you don't think about the consequences of your actions, you are able to face things without hiding yourself."

He holds his sword out and it vanishes into thin air. Furihata's breaths are erratic-the brunet examines his palm and is taken aback when he finds no crimson stain. There is a scar, however, but he realizes that it is of importance to him. After all, it is the sign that he has finally achieved what he has desired for so long.

Akashi offers his hand and Furihata accepts the invitation willingly, his own hand no longer trembling. It is to his delight that Akashi's touch is familiarly human. Unlike Kise, Akashi's hand is comfortably warm. "Thank you," he says, relieved that he is no longer petrified when he stands in front of Akashi.

The other's gold and red eyes become more vibrant upon Furihata's flawless utterance. Akashi steadies him yet again when he gets up and whirls around, already walking away. "The bath is just the beginning of your transition into this world. You'll have to undergo several...celebrations in order for you to become one of us."

Furihata does not say anything about the matter and trails behind Akashi. However, Akashi halts his footsteps and turns around to face Furihata, his eyebrows knit together. "Kouki, I'm surprised that you aren't curious about what these celebrations will be, what with all the questions that you want to ask."

Swallowing, Furihata disregards his flinch and murmurs, "...I think I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt, Akashi-kun."

Akashi smiles. "Please do call me Seijuuro from now on. We are similar in ways that you can't imagine."

Again, Furihata tucks away the need to ask him where exactly they resemble each other, eyes widening instead at Akashi's request. "Ah, Akashi-kun, I don't think it would be proper for me to-"

"Please," Akashi insists, the statement truly more of a plea rather than an order.

Like this, Akashi is not a king and Furihata is not a subordinate. Akashi is not omnipotent and Furihata is not helpless. Neither Akashi nor Furihata are brave and invincible. Like this, they are both humans, conversing as if they have known each other for the number of years that can't be counted on two hands. As if they are old friends.

Of course, Furihata knows that there is still a long way to go before that could become true.

"Seijuuro...kun," Furihata says slowly, taking the time to acclimatize to the name.

Akashi turns away, satisfied. "I think that that's a good start. Now, follow me-we have a place to visit while we are still in broad daylight."

.

.

They proceed first to a tailor's quaint shop, with Furihata lagging behind Akashi due to his fumbling with his armor. Akashi beckons the brunet to walk beside him and he obeys immediately, putting his hands away from the breastplate that digs painfully into his skin.

"We'll have to measure you, since I doubt that your current attire would be appropriate for the ball tonight," Akashi remarks, opening the door to the shop for Furihata. The latter steps in quietly and raises his head towards the sound of rattling wind chimes. He rolls his shoulders, grimacing at the weight of his armor.

Hours seem to pass by swiftly as Akashi shakes his head at the sight of the tailor's choices for Furihata's outfit. The tailor does show his displeasure at times, but Furihata apologizes on Akashi's behalf, looking to Akashi for any sign of approval. He does get exhausted as the sun begins its descent in the sky, fingers tugging at the dark cravat wound around his neck.

"Hm, that wouldn't do," Akashi says, specifically eyeing the cravat with which Furihata is uncomfortable. "Perhaps we could try simpler designs for him. Something less...suffocating."

The tailor grumbles something akin to irk and twirls his fingers around the empty air, making Furihata's clothes change form while still on him.

Furihata has to take a step back from the force that knocks the wind out of him and staggers forward again. He blinks and focuses on the large, rustic mirror placed in front of him.

He doesn't know what to call what he's wearing but deems it the most decent out of all of the clothes he has tried on so far.

As if reading his mind, Akashi informs him, "You're wearing a cerulean brocade waistcoat with a high black velvet shawl collar, trousers, and leather shoes."

Furihata mumbles, "Oh."

"It looks appropriate enough," Akashi says, turning toward the tailor and nodding at him. "Thank you for your services. I will see to it that you will have been rewarded."

"It's my pleasure," the tailor sighs in relief, indiscreetly wiping the sweat from his forehead. He cocks his head at Furihata's appearance and expresses his satisfaction. "I believe it suits him well."

The flattery only causes a rosy color to suffuse on Furihata's cheeks, although Furihata glances at the tailor in suspicion, wary of his different attitude earlier. He couldn't blame him, really-it is difficult to get on Akashi's bad side.

Akashi fondly smiles at Furihata's direction. "Indeed it does."

The effect is instantaneous; Furihata looks away in embarrassment, quietly wondering why Akashi's words are capable of eliciting such emotions from him.

When they step out of the shop, leaving a trail of chimes behind them, Akashi takes a moment to gaze up at the darkening sky. Like a chain reaction, Furihata does the same, squinting at the blanket of stars across the span of the galaxy. Purple and red lights paint the sky overhead like nebulae just given birth to. Furihata is startled when Akashi speaks.

"The day has gone past without us knowing," Akashi says, exhaling softly with a puff of mist emanating from his mouth. He then faces Furihata. "Kouki, I hope you're ready for the ball in spite of not having been briefed with the specifics."

"Akashi-kun-" Furihata starts but takes it back when Akashi shoots him look that clearly depicts his dissatisfaction. "Ah-I mean, Seijuuro-kun, I just wanted to thank you for the clothes. They're...much better than the armor. I think, um, they look really nice, too. But there's one thing I've been meaning to ask you-what _is_ a ball?"

The redhead stares at him for a moment before he laughs softly. The question must have made Furihata even more of an idiot in Akashi's eyes, but Akashi does not seem to be displeased by Furihata's lack of knowledge about this world's traditions. "I apologize for that. Do you remember when you first arrived at the palace? Do you happen to recall what was taking place on that evening?"

Furihata places his finger on his chin in contemplation. "There were creatures dancing, and soothing music, and...magic."

Akashi affirms. "The dance is typically the highlight of the ball, but what a ball simply means is a feast for the elite. For us, it is a celebration of happiness, eternity, and the congregation of people who have transcended their lives as humans."

_The congregation of people who were murdered_ remains unspoken; nonetheless, Furihata remembers the fact that even Akashi has died in the hands of another. There are many reasons why he would not dare to inquire about Akashi's obsoletion in the Lower World. One, he does not want to ruin this evening meant to formally welcome him. Two, it would be a sign of intrusion, and Furihata does not wish to invade somebody's personal space. Three, asking about such a thing is in no way polite. Four-contrary to what has been said for him to be, he is still not as fearless as Akashi thinks he is. Five-Akashi is much different from Kise. Whereas Kise appears to be approachable, Akashi still is the 'King', and Furihata would be damned if he thinks that he can hold an informal conversation with Akashi.

The justifications of his hesitation to ask Akashi about his death disappear from the top of his head once Akashi claps his hands. "I will send you on your way, so you may find your way to the front of the hall through the thick crowd. Should I be confident that you will be there when I arrive?"

Fervently nodding, Furihata responds, "Yes...Seijuuro-kun. I'll be waiting."

Akashi says, "Good." Before he thrusts Furihata into another dimension, however, he keeps his fingers poised as if to snap them. "One last thing."

When he does snap his fingers, Furihata gasps as he feels his unruly hair slicked back perfectly. The brunet pats his head and is surprised to find that his mane has been fixed.

"That looks better," Akashi tenderly says, the corners of his lips barely extending to form a smile. Furihata doesn't know why Akashi is generous with his smiles-perhaps he has been sad for long enough that he's grown tired of it, or he still is lonely and has decided that it would be best if he would just pretend that he isn't.

Akashi adds, astonishing Furihata yet again, "Always keep your head up, Kouki. People will want to see you for who you are, especially tonight, and you need not worry because you will realize that many of them find you dashing."

It takes about a minute for Furihata to process what Akashi has just said before he adorns his own face with a blush. He does not respond in the current lack of ability to do so.

Akashi snaps his fingers again, and the world revolves and revolves and revolves around him like the whole of it wants to gravitate toward him. The cacophony of the environments that he passes by mingles and intertwines with each other that it all fades into one persistent noise, that it becomes so singular that soon enough it equates to silence. His vision is a haze, his mind blank-save for thoughts of the ball and Akashi's compliments.

What stands out the most, though, is the anxiety that results from an epiphany regarding the ball itself.

He absolutely doesn't know how to _dance_.

.

Stumbling into the fountain wasn't exactly what Furihata had in mind for a grand entrance.

He doesn't have an inkling of why this world seems to like having him close to water-Furihata realizes a moment too late that he hears a splash instead of his feet landing safely on the floor. For now, he can secretly blame the situation on Akashi, who didn't inform him of where he would be transported to. The Akashi he knows wouldn't do something for the hilarity, but in Akashi's defense, Furihata doesn't know much about him.

Furihata sputters and coughs as soon as he surfaces. Around him, the creatures halt their dance and turn to look at him-first, in surprise; second, in curiosity; third, in amusement; and fourth, in pity.

Aomine is the first to burst into laughter, and Furihata can't rein his humiliation in. He buries his damp cheek in the curve of his collar but flinches when a shadow looms over him.

To his shock, Aomine is the one holding his hand out for him, although there are spots of grease on his fingers. Furihata resists the urge to giggle at the crumbs stuck on the side of Aomine's mouth, focusing instead on his formal attire. Even his hair is slicked to the side, some spikes still showing. He's wearing a bow tie of some sort and a dark suit that doesn't hide his tail.

"Come on, you look stupid just sitting there," Aomine drawls out, pulling Furihata up in one go. He shakes his head, still chuckling at Furihata's state. "Man, you really are clumsy. I'll take you to Satsuki so she can dry you up-but if you dare to do something else to her you should expect to be beat up by tomorrow at the latest."

Furihata hums in agreement, the embarrassment dissipating as soon as he gets back on his feet, still dripping from head to toe. "I understand. Uh, Aomine-kun, is the food really that delicious?"

Aomine disregards the cheeky smile that Furihata has and says, "Yeah, damn if it isn't. Don't tell Satsuki that I finished a whole platter. She doesn't have the guts to report that to Akashi, but she can take it upon herself to berate me. For a woman, she punches pretty hard."

"O...kay," Furihata replies, unsure. He walks with Aomine, treading a path through the hordes of people swaying to the upbeat music. Without any warning, Aomine shoves him to the corner and says, "Oi, Satsuki, this idiot got himself in the fountain. I'm not sure if you can dry him up, but here you go."

As Furihata nearly trips in front of Momoi, he exhales shakily and looks up, the sight of blindingly pink hair greeting him. He holds his breath as he scans Momoi's figure-her curls cascade towards her chest, and she's clad in an emerald gown with a wide neckline and puffed sleeves. Silver threads were sewn into her clothes to resemble spirals.

"Furihata-kun, what have you gotten yourself to this time?" Momoi pouts, and it is then that Furihata reprimands himself for blushing too many times today. He steps forward, squeezing the water out of his cuffs, and smiles apologetically.

Momoi sighs in resignation, putting her glass down on a nearby table. She holds a gloved hand up and makes a waving gesture, her fingers leaving glitter in their wake.

Furihata glances down at himself and finds that his clothes are just as crisp as when he had first worn them.

"Not bad, Furihata-kun," Momoi grins, retrieving her glass and putting it to her lips. She gingerly takes a sip then comments, "Whose taste is it that I should commend?"

"Aka-Seijuuro-kun."

At the sound of the redhead's name, Momoi blinks and erupts into a giggle. She clears her throat afterward, pointing her index finger up to signify that she is collecting herself. "I should've known. But I admit that I'm surprised that Akashi-kun let you call him that, even after only a day of knowing each other."

Furihata scratches the back of his neck. "Ah, he told me to. I think he said something about us being similar without my knowledge of the reason why."

Aomine and Momoi look at each other, each assessing the significance of Akashi's words. When they do break their gazes, Aomine announces, crossing his arms over his chest in spite of knowing that the grease on his fingers could transfer to the seemingly expensive material of his suit, "You're weird."

Furihata wrinkles his nose. "Huh?"

Elbowing Aomine in the side (who grunts in return), Momoi amends, "What he means is, Akashi-kun doesn't usually do those things-you know, allow someone to call him by his first name and such. So Aomine-kun's right in saying that something's weird, but it doesn't necessarily have to be you."

"I still don't understand why," Furihata says helplessly. He's about to ask Momoi something else but blurts, "Ah! Seijuuro-kun told me to meet him in front of the hall, so..."

The smile that Momoi has is in disbelief, and even Aomine's jaw drops at Furihata's statement. Aomine accuses, "You hooked up with him, didn't you? I knew that bastard was up to something sly, just never thought it'd be _you_, of all people."

Furihata opens his mouth to ask what it means but Momoi beats him to it, grinding her high heel on Aomine's foot. The brunet winces at the sound and covers one ear when Aomine howls in agony, bending to clutch his foot. "Sorry, Furihata-kun," Momoi huffs, blowing a strand of her hair away from her face. "You should get going, then, unless you want Akashi-kun to scold you."

Bowing his head, Furihata says, "I'll be leaving, then...Momoi-san, Aomine-kun."

"Heh," Aomine mutters, glaring at Momoi while nursing his foot. Momoi waves at Furihata, telling him to go quickly.

Furihata murmurs a string of apologies, excuse me's, and thank you's as he weaves his way toward the front section of the hall, where the music originates from. He thinks that the ballroom might as well be a makeshift gym since he feels as though he has just lost several pounds from navigating the spacious hall alone.

Just as he takes the final step towards the group of people playing music-an _orchestra_, Momoi once informed him-something materializes beside him, the air becoming a bit chillier as a wind sweeps through the floor, having come from nowhere. Furihata steps aside, weary of what it might be, until he sees red and realizes that it's a person teleporting himself to the empty space beside him.

Furihata swallows once he discovers who it is. "Aka-Seijuuro-kun."

Crimson and gold stare back at him, glowing under the light of the chandeliers. Akashi has changed from his robes and into his own formal eveningwear, donning a black coat with gilded buttons, pristine white breeches, and white stockings. "Kouki," Akashi acknowledges, tucking his lapels into his coat. "I hope you weren't waiting too long."

"I wasn't," Furihata assures him. So as not to fix his gaze on Akashi, he turns toward the orchestra, his face only a shade away from being beet-red. To his surprise, Midorima is sitting in front of the piano, closing his eyes as he hums along to the tune and moves his fingers fluidly along the keys.

Akashi follows his line of sight and says, "Shintarou has always been excellent at playing the piano. I believe that he has learned how to play when he was still in elementary."

_When he was still alive,_ Furihata muses, wincing at the disparity between his own thoughts and the festive atmosphere that surrounds him. He also notices the pride underlying Akashi's statement-Akashi and Midorima seem to share a bond that runs far deeper than any of the relationships that Akashi has. When he thinks about it, though, anyone could admire Midorima's talent. There is just something different about how Akashi praises him.

"Of course, Shintarou's skill and mastery do not surpass mine," Akashi adds, striding toward a member of the orchestra to receive an instrument of his own. Furihata stares at his back wryly and resumes his expression of agreement once Akashi comes back.

Akashi smiles at him. "I suppose you could help yourself with a meal first; you must be starving after hours of being surrounded by nothing but clothes."

Furihata is taken aback. "I-"

"You can probably socialize with the other residents, too," Akashi says, encouraging Furihata to distance himself. Furihata thinks he should be offended that Akashi is already trying to get rid of him within minutes of being around him, but he decides to bite the inside of his cheek and convince himself that Akashi is not that kind of person.

"How am I supposed to-"

He doesn't get to finish his sentence when Akashi leaves him on his own, taking his place in front of the other violinists. Akashi murmurs something to Midorima, who nods and starts playing another tune.

Sighing, Furihata stalks off in the opposite direction and immediately sees the long row of delicacies on the side of the hall. He brings his hand up to his stomach when it growls, as if only now realizing that he hasn't eaten anything since he visited the lake. It strikes him as peculiar when he considers the fact that he hasn't been hungry at that time.

He ponders on which food he would get for a while, unable to choose between a cake with edible pearls or another meal that seems to be meat. Furihata's mouth waters at the sight of the latter but doesn't completely trust its aroma; he has never encountered this cuisine before, and he doesn't want to take the chance if ever it ends up disgusting him.

Furihata resolutely goes for the cake.

When he's gotten a slice on his plate, he takes a small piece with his fork and sniffs at it suspiciously. Looking around, Furihata sees to it that nobody is staring at him, and he sighs when he has assured that everybody else's attention is focused on the dance.

It's almost comical how swiftly he takes a bite off of the cake. Furihata swallows, the texture of the fondant icing smooth on his tongue. He recoils and almost drops the plate, blurting while still chewing, "What the heck-"

Later, there's someone patting on his back to help him swallow the piece of cake still lodged in his mouth. Furihata does so, grimacing at the taste, and turns to the person behind him. He flinches when the said person looms over him, and in solution he looks up, staring directly at a purple-haired individual.

"Eh, I guess I'm sorry about that," the tall man sheepishly says. "I always make the food too sweet for everybody else."

Furihata rubs on his throat and holds a hand up. "It's...fine. I just don't usually eat sugary stuff, so I was a bit startled about that."

The one who claims to be a baker is nibbling on another snack when Furihata looks at him. "I don't understand why you wouldn't like the cake, though. It's a favorite in the palace."

"Uh, I'm just not used to it, I think," Furihata says, regretting his slip. He hadn't meant to complain about the man's cooking. "But I still think that it's delicious, really!"

At that, the man stops halfway through his snack, his eyes changing lights. "Really?"

Furihata nods earnestly. "Yes, really."

The man sets his snack away for a moment and holds his hand out for a shake. "I'm Murasakibara Atsushi," he says through a mouthful of chocolate.

"Furihata Kouki," the brunet responds enthusiastically, shaking Murasakibara's hand while having to raise his head to properly look him in the eye. Murasakibara's palm is huge enough to clasp both of Furihata's hands, much to Furihata's awe.

Murasakibara pops a tidbit of his snack into his mouth. "Ah, Hata-chin, you must be the newcomer here. Everybody's telling me that there's something off about you."

"I didn't know that," Furihata says slowly, playing back Murasakibara's statement in his head. Although his greatest concern is the residents' opinion of him, the nickname that Murasakibara has just given him is what lingers in the confines of his mind. He supposes that both Kise and Murasakibara are fond of playing around with people's names, only Kise requires something more than a simple introduction. Now that Furihata's thoughts go back to Kise, his mood dampens and the music doesn't reach his brain as it does his ears.

Fortunately, there's a change in the harmony created by the orchestra to pull Furihata back into the present without somebody shaking his shoulders. Furihata inhales as he recognizes that the music is no longer upbeat, nor is it any tinge of happy.

His eyes focus on Midorima, who shifts in his seat as he plays the first few notes of the song on his own.

Akashi begins his part, delicately running his bow over the strings of his violin. The other violinists, after a few minutes of just Midorima and Akashi playing the piece, contribute to the harmony in the background with varying notes. Furihata notes how Akashi closes his eyes just as Midorima does, both absorbed by their own performance.

Even the dancing pairs stop in their steps to hum along to the song as if they know it by heart. Furihata turns to Murasakibara and finds that while he isn't taking part in the other residents' music, his vision is trained on the orchestra.

Involuntarily, Furihata stares at Akashi again-he senses something clench in his chest, though he's not quite sure what it is and why it does. He listens and forgets about notes and musical sheets and talent and violin; what the song brings to mind is despair, loneliness, darkness, and hope despite them all. Furihata holds his breath and his hand to his chest to stifle something unknown.

Soon, the sounds of the other violins fade as it is Akashi and Midorima who remain playing until the end of the song. It eventually comes to an end, as all things do.

Furihata quickly wipes the corners of his eyes before anyone can notice.

When he has regained his composure, he clears his throat and says, "I wonder how something so sad can be so beautiful."

Murasakibara shrugs next to him. "Aka-chin always manages to do it, and I don't think anybody questions why or how."

.

Without any warning, the lights dim above them and the crowd shuffles to form a big circle. Somebody unfamiliar grabs Furihata by the arm and he unintentionally yelps, wildly looking around for any face that he can recognize. In this darkness, he can only make out moving silhouettes and shadows cast by the decorations in the hall. Furihata scans the proximity for any sign of Murasakibara, but he cannot see the purple-haired lad anywhere near.

The certain somebody who previously whisked Furihata away to the center of the hall puts a hand on his shoulder and another is clasped around his own. Furihata becomes aware of the position he's in too late; the lights turn on again, making Furihata blink back the dots that form behind his eyes.

His gaze falls on a kaleidoscope-eyed girl, whose irises change color every second. The girl smiles at him with her perfect pearly whites. "Hi."

"W-what-"

"Come on, the dance is starting," insists the girl, and Furihata nearly steps on the hem of her dress.

Furihata doesn't have the chance to ask her what the dance is when the music picks up and the pairs begin to sweep across the floor in half-circles. The girl muffles a groan with clenched teeth when Furihata's feet land on her toes.

"Sorry!" Furihata exclaims, his head a mass of apologies. If he just wished hard enough, perhaps he could resume eating his cake-

The girl toothily grins at him before she whirls around and changes partners, giving way to another woman who winks at Furihata the moment she nears his arms. Her blond hair reaches down to her waist, and she isn't quite as timid as the first girl. "Ha, don't think you'll be ruining my pedicure, Tin Man."

_Tin Man?_ Furihata makes an effort to glide and direct his partner without inflicting any harm on her, and it's evident on the sweat accumulating on his forehead.

The blonde laughs at his attempts to dance as decently as he could. "Nice try. You look like a chicken trying to fly, which I don't think is a really pretty picture for you."

_What chicken,_ Furihata grumbles quietly, relieved that he would be changing partners soon. The music drags throughout the evening, and Furihata has already danced with what he estimates to be fifty individuals, most of them female and the others male and queer. He's surprised to find that he's fine with that, actually-it's not like it's frowned upon in the Lower World anymore.

The music sounds like it is coming to a close when Furihata's knees nearly buckle underneath him, and he only has one partner left to dance with before he hits the cot.

He gasps when he's the one being twirled about, and he stumbles into the arms of a familiar redhead.

His eyes make contact with Akashi's own. "Hello there, Kouki."

Furihata straightens his posture and swallows. "Aka-Seijuuro-kun."

Akashi takes the initiative to place one hand on Furihata's waist and use the other the hold Furihata's. However, he goes farther than that-his fingers entwine with Furihata's own too tightly, his grasp almost bruising. Furihata's palms go clammy at the contact and is grateful when Akashi does not call him out for it.

"You should practice calling me properly," Akashi remarks, smiling to ease the tension building up in Furihata's shoulders. He swipes his thumb over Furihata's index finger, saying, "Calm down, Kouki. You're too stiff, but you can learn how to dance if follow my lead."

"I'm really bad at this," Furihata meekly mumbles, looking down at his shoes. The song becomes more mellow with each passing second; Akashi responds to the slow transition easily, accommodating a sway.

"Not if I say you aren't," Akashi says. He continues to caress the side of Furihata's palm with his thumb. "It's easy if you stop thinking that you can't do it. If I step back, that means you can step forward. If I step forward, you have to give way for me. Where I go, you'll follow, and the same is true for the other way around. Do you understand?"

To further emphasize his point, Akashi demonstrates a part of the dance, stepping back on a foot. Furihata bites his lip and takes his place.

Akashi gives him a satisfied smile. "Good. Now, you'll have to do that without observing my feet. Look me in the eye."

"Seijuuro-kun?" asks Furihata, uncertain if he has heard it right. He can tolerate being so close to Akashi-it's fine to dance with him and hold his hand-but it may be too much to hold his gaze. He's afraid that Akashi will know all that he is just by staring into his irises. Besides, eye contact seems too intimate for people like them, for the ones who are still trying to decide if they are mere strangers or acquaintances.

"Look me in the eye," Akashi repeats with no sign of his patience wearing thin. Furihata gulps down a swirling amalgamation of emotions in his throat-of fear, doubt, pity, and something else that he can't quite explain. He nods, focusing on both of Akashi's eyes, and discovers that although they're the parts of him that make himself intimidating, they're also the ones that reveal how human he still is.

Akashi guides him and says, "Trust is a key element in this dance, and if you look at my eyes you will understand me. Just as gears will destroy each other when they go opposite ways, people cannot properly function together if they do not have the same goals. Now, Kouki-do you trust me?"

Furihata, under Akashi's gaze, wants to affirm, but he thinks of all the times he has been lied to and knows that someday it will all come back to him. "No-at least, not yet."

Surprised, Akashi sucks in a sharp breath and smiles a different smile, one that Furihata hasn't had the privilege of seeing yet. "Thank you for telling the truth, Kouki. But the right time will come, as it always does."

Without Furihata being aware of it, the song ends, and Akashi lets him go to bow before him. He does the same, lowering his head farther than Akashi did, and says, "Thank you for the dance, Seijuuro-kun."

"It was my pleasure," Akashi replies, his eyes flickering under the candlelight from the chandeliers. "By the way, your room has been prepared for you; someone will accompany you to show you where it is. I hope you'll have a good night's rest."

Furihata's response is automatic, and the brunet is amazed at how easy it is to talk to Akashi now. Relief floods him at the mention of his own quarters. "I hope you'll rest well, too."

He's left staring at Akashi's retreating back, his palms tingling and his chest a cage for fluttering wings. Akashi leaves two catchfly petals in his wake, one white and the other red. Kneeling on the floor, Furihata picks them up and examines them under the light. After staring at them for a while, he yawns, sensing the drowsiness catch up with him.

The catchflies must be of some significance to Akashi. Furihata decides to pocket the petals and heads off to the base of the staircase, seeing someone waving at him.

.

.

Weeks pass and Furihata eventually adapts to the ways of the Upper World-sometimes he's tasked to go to the market and buy the ingredients for the meals served in the palace, and other times he visits the fields and practices his swordplay. Aomine seldom tags along, daring him to surpass him in a race on foot. Of course, Furihata doesn't have enough stamina to keep up, so early on he surrenders and promises to treat Aomine to a drink in the tavern.

During his sleep, Kuroko also appears, bringing him messages from his sister and friends. The first messages he receives are always borne of tears, but as his 'death' becomes more of a thing in the recent past, the people whom he has left behind tell him stories of their days and how their world is slowly being rebuilt.

Most of the time, however, Furihata spends his days with Momoi, who educates him on various species found in the Upper World. They broach the subject of flowers one day, and Furihata absentmindedly runs his fingers through blades of grass until he remembers the petals still in his pocket. When he fishes them out, he's surprised to see that they're still fresh and intact.

"Momoi-san, what are these?" he inquires, holding the red and white petals out to her. Momoi cocks her head to the side and scrunches her nose, trying to recall where she has seen the petals before.

Finally, Momoi says, "Ah, they're from catchflies. Why are you asking, Furihata-kun?"

"I just..." Furihata is about to concoct a story of how he found them littered on the floor just after his first ball ended, but he saves the trouble for never and sighs. "Seijuuro-kun left them after the ball. I've noticed that he always had those two catchflies in his breast pocket, but I never actually asked him why he treasured them so much."

Momoi hums in understanding, taking the petals between her fingertips and blowing on them lightly. The wind sweeps through the meadow and threads through Momoi's long locks. "During the Victorian Era, which was way before your time, there was something called the language of the flowers. People used the meanings of flowers to convey what they want to tell the people to whom they give the flowers."

"Catchflies," Furihata says, touching the petals now held by Momoi. "What do they mean?"

"I really shouldn't be the one to ask," Momoi laughs, a slight tremor to her voice. "But since it's just the both of us here, I think it'll be okay. So there are red and white ones, right? The meanings vary with the colors, even if they're both catchflies."

"Mm," Furihata nods.

"The red ones signify youthful love," Momoi solemnly says, "and the white ones mean, 'I fall victim to betrayal.'"

It is only then that Furihata considers the prospect of Akashi feeling emotions such as love, which he deemed as a stranger to the likes of the redhead. It isn't that Akashi is too cold, too detached, too impassive-somehow, Furihata feels as though Akashi is hiding behind his smile and pretense, and he maintains a considerable amount of space even if he does interact easily with Furihata. Akashi just didn't seem to be someone who is capable of falling in love, and Furihata pinches the side of his thigh when his mind becomes riddled with prejudice.

The brunet wonders if the catchflies have anything to say about how Akashi died.

"Now that I think about it, Furihata-kun," Momoi disrupts the flow of his thoughts, "you've never asked me how I-well, how I died."

The statement catches Furihata by surprise, and he doesn't want to think how Momoi could've suffered in her previous world. "I didn't find any reason to, Momoi-san. Knowing that won't change what I think of you, anyway."

Momoi laughs, the sound very much gladdening and alive. "You flatter me too much, Furihata-kun. But I wanted to tell you. Unlike some of us, I want the burden of a memory lifted by sharing it to somebody else. I hope I'm not imposing, though."

"No, no-you don't have to worry about it," Furihata waves his hands frantically to keep his dread at bay. He's convinced, so convinced that Momoi's murder would be as sickening as Kise's was, if not much more.

In spite of noticing the unease in his voice, Momoi takes a deep breath and blows on the catchfly petals one last time, letting them dance with the breeze that would take them away to somewhere they can't be recovered. "It was in 1985-again, a long time before you were born. I was set to attend university with high marks, and I wanted to be a researcher of some sort, only I didn't know which field I was going to be researching for.

"During that time, women like me were allowed to go to college, but some people were utterly convinced that we wouldn't make it past freshman year," Momoi recounts, sighing softly at the absurdity of the condemnation. "I wanted to prove them wrong, and they told me that I was just another pretty face waiting to be imprisoned in the kitchen. To think that I wasn't even capable of cooking...sometimes, it makes me laugh at how people get so irrational against specific groups. But sometimes I also get sad when I think of how blinded they are by false ideals."

Furihata continues to pet the grass, tracing its pointy edges and letting the blades prick his palm. On the other hand, Momoi closes her eyes, savoring the breath of fresh air. "They couldn't believe that I became part of the dean's list on my first semester. I think it had something to do with their egos; I surpassed them in the rankings and consequently hurt their prides.

"So what did they do?" Momoi blinks her eyes open, and Furihata flinches when he realizes that they are glassy. "They tried to take me out on dates, but of course I refused-nobody really knows how people are, and I didn't want to bet my confidence on them. Then they forced me, and that was the time I hated being a girl because in the end I was much weaker than them."

"Believe me, Momoi-san," Furihata says, his voice breaking. "You're one of the strongest people I've met."

"If that were true, I wouldn't have been here." Momoi grins, and it's all shades of wrong. She resumes, "They told me that that was all I was for-to take everything they had, to relieve them of their frustrations. And then they made sure I didn't live to tell the tale, because they knew I was capable of filing a case against them."

Silence reigns over them, and Furihata fiddles with the small flowers that he sees next to his feet-dandelions, a combination of flower and seed heads. He plucks the yellow flowers off, cutting off a portion of their stems, and bunches them together to weave the stems. Momoi folds her knees up to her chin and stares at Furihata in curiosity.

When he's done fashioning a flower crown from the dandelions, Furihata holds it atop Momoi's head, and the pink-haired girl bows to accept the crown. Furihata murmurs with his throat constricting, "I'm sorry for everything they've ever done to you, and I hope that you will come to forget how it felt like back then."

"No one ever really forgets when it hurt so much," Momoi says softly, lightly touching the dandelions on her hair. "Now, I've gotten what I wanted the most only because this world has given it to me. I wanted to know everything under the sun, wanted to overload my mind with ideas because I was so fascinated by what lay unknown out there."

Furihata processes what Momoi has just said. He blurts, "You mean...?"

Momoi nods once, fixing the crown perched on her head. "I know your story as well as I do mine. I know where everything and everyone came from, and where they ended...their memories are also mine, to the extent that I can't distinguish between what belongs to me and to others."

Unable to restrain himself, Furihata blurts, "So you know what my sister's name is."

"Suzume," Momoi answers quickly, not in haste but due to the fact that she knows it by heart. "Furihata-kun, I didn't realize that knowing so much was a burden instead of a gift. I bear everybody else's pain because they are a part of me now. I wish I wasn't foolish when I thought about my desires."

Furihata shifts on the ground and grips the front of his gambeson. His clutch loosens when he realizes something that he ought to have known long ago. "Wait-you know about my parents, then?"

"Of course I do," Momoi says. "They're here-haven't you seen them yet?"

The brunet hurriedly gets up from his cross-legged stance and places his hands on Momoi's shoulders. "Momoi-san, do you know where they are?"

Momoi's eyes widen, startled by Furihata's outburst. "I'm afraid that's not something I know particularly. I know who people are, what they've gone through-but not their specific whereabouts."

"Do you know someone who does?" presses Furihata, all the years of his parents' absence counting down in his head. Their faces are blurred, like muddled water, in his memories, and he can't even begin to measure how ashamed he is that he has forgotten what their voices sounded like.

Momoi shakes her head sympathetically. "Mm-mm. But the closest you can get to finding them is Akashi-kun, since the members of the Court keep tabs on the residents of the palace and send the information to him. It might not be easy, depending on your parents' individual desires. After all, there are those who wish to live somewhere else."

"So...do you know where Seijuuro-kun is right now?" The hope in Furihata's voice doesn't waver, especially after gleaning that he is close to seeing his parents again.

"Like I said, Furihata-kun, I don't know where people are at a given time," sighs Momoi. She puts a finger to her chin in thought. "You could try finding him in the palace or the fields. I don't know where else he could possibly be; he usually keeps to himself, even in the long stretch of time that I've known him."

.

.

Night is about to fall upon the Upper World, the horizon darkening with pink, orange, and purple mixing with the blue of the sky. Cumulus clouds swirl around the sun as if to hide it, to thrust it away from Furihata's vision to let the darkness take over. The crickets begin to whir, taking cover in the tall grass. Furihata wanders aimlessly around the fields, looking for footsteps that may not be there. The shadows of the sunlight frame half of his face. "Seijuuro-kun? Are you there?"

He sniffs, the seed heads of dandelions floating as the wind carries them tenderly. Furihata has spent the whole day roaming the palace for any sign of Akashi-he has visited his room, the Court's own, the ballroom, the dining hall, and Midorima's infirmary, but his efforts were futile. Midorima had turned him away, and he had briefly wondered if the healer knew where Akashi was, after all.

After scouring the palace for the redhead, Furihata had proceeded to the fields where he trained. They had been empty, save for a few critters and butterflies. He had also encountered a wild and ferocious beast, from which he backed away. Fortunately, the beast had enough reason not to assault him.

Furihata eventually becomes weary, landing on his backside in the middle of nowhere. He should have waited until tomorrow to confirm his parents' location with Akashi-even after weeks of a new life in the Upper World, he still hasn't memorized its geography. In addition, he doesn't know how the other residents use their magic-perhaps its art is learned instead of innate, because when he attempts to summon something with his mere thought, nothing happens.

"Argh, I'm lost," he groans, rubbing his sides to keep the warmth. He looks around in hopes of finding any landmark, but all he sees is a wide expanse of greens. In front of him, the sun is rapidly descending.

Determined not to stay stagnant, Furihata stands up again, some round spiked burrs catching onto his breeches. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls out, "Seijuuro-kun! Seijuuro-kun, are you there?"

His mouth tastes dry after shouting for a while, and he pants, patting his chest to keep himself awake. Furihata shakes the burrs from his breeches, but they are difficult to remove. He resigns to letting them stay on the fabric.

Furihata's about to collapse from the exhaustion of walking and running around all day until he catches a glimpse of a tree's silhouette from afar. If ever it begins to rain and he falls asleep, he could certainly use the shade. The trudge towards the tree seems like forever, especially since it resembles an uphill trek. The sky is completely rid of the sun and embedded with stars as Furihata drags his feet.

He jerks when he sees somebody else sitting near the tree and realizes that the individual is also perched precariously on the brink of a cliff. At the sound of grass rustling, the person turns his head and expresses shock at Furihata's appearance.

"Ah, Seijuuro-kun, I finally found you," Furihata mumbles, his tone only half-doused with glee, and when he steps forward his knees surrender on him. Akashi, quick to his feet, is already there to brace Furihata against himself. Furihata looks up, a hint of lethargy in his eyes, at Akashi, and in the moonlight the redhead's face is soft and young, as if it is still pure of the evils in the Lower World.

Akashi helps Furihata stand up on his own. His hands are on Furihata's drooping shoulders when he says, "Kouki, what are you doing here?"

Furihata shakes his head to clear the drowsiness. Akashi's hands, even through his gambeson, feel cold. "I wanted to ask you something important, but I didn't know where you were. I got lost but luckily stumbled upon your hiding place."

"This isn't my hiding place," Akashi argues, letting his hands fall from Furihata's shoulders. Furihata stares at him, his hazel eyes boring through Akashi's own. He thinks that Akashi, on the eve of his arrival, had put up a facade, but it's moments like this that show that Akashi also has chinks in his armor. "I only found this cliff because I was expected to know my domain."

"Do you always go here, though?" Furihata says, taking his place on the edge of the cliff and letting his feet dangle over a tall drop. He can't discern the view below, but he can hear raging waters. A river, perhaps.

Akashi discreetly walks over to his spot and sits, maintaining a reasonable distance. "Only rarely, when I have the time. I appreciate silence in a world that never stops talking."

"You want to be alone," Furihata murmurs absentmindedly. He reddens at the realization of his slip and blurts, "Ah, that's not what I meant! I, um, I guess that you have to remember for a while that you have your own space, especially since you're tasked to converse with a lot of people. Er, that's what I was trying to say."

Akashi doesn't say anything in return, choosing to close his eyes to the sound of the gushing river. He keeps his hands clasped on his lap, his posture perfect even while sitting down with nothing to serve as his backrest. Through the corners of his eyes, Furihata observes him, the quiet admittedly unnerving.

Akashi eventually shatters the silence. "What is it that you wanted to ask?"

The brunet reprimands himself inwardly for having forgotten the purpose of his conversation with Akashi. He also remembers that Akashi doesn't know much about his past and dreads the part where he will have to tell Akashi something about his childhood. "Oh, I was wondering if you knew where my parents were. They were...they were killed when I was young. Momoi-san told me that they were in this world."

To Furihata's surprise, Akashi doesn't ask further about the way his parents died. He only says, "I might have met them before, but I clearly didn't know that they were related to you. We could find them tomorrow. Is that all?"

Akashi's sentences are too clipped, too impersonal. There's no twinge of concern about Furihata's desire to look for his parents. Furihata opens his mouth but no sound comes out, because he knows that Akashi isn't obligated to be worried about him. When Akashi stands up to leave, Furihata hastily says, "Se-Seijuuro-" the drop of the suffix makes Akashi stiffen rather than smile at Furihata's progress-"Seijuuro, one more thing."

"Time doesn't wait for anyone, Kouki," Akashi looms over him, his eyes devoid of any emotion. "Go on, what is it?"

Furihata's pounding chest makes it impossible for the brunet to form coherent words. It has been long since he felt terrified of Akashi, of anything-but the blood rushing to his head is his signal to step back and let the matter go. He's about to do just that, to tell Akashi to forget it, but he's sick and tired of having to run away when he very well knows that he can risk it all to be on the front lines. It may just be his curiosity acting on someone as shrouded with mystery as Akashi, but every time he sees Akashi standing alone, his mind screams, _Wrong, wrong, wrong._

"How did you die?"

Instead of being lifted from his shoulders, the burden of Akashi's answer only presses down on Furihata further. He becomes hypersensitized to his dim surroundings, and his eyes dart to the trees, the sky, the river-everywhere but Akashi's stare.

He finally musters the courage to look at Akashi directly, and he flinches when he finds that Akashi's lips are twisted into a frown and his eyebrows knit together.

"Why do you care so much?" Akashi asks him, his tone seething with fragile anger. "Why do you care about matters that do not concern you? It only makes you vulnerable, makes you weak."

Furihata, stunned, searches Akashi's face for signs of lying. He finds none.

He stands up on one knee first, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Because it makes me human," Furihata mumbles, looking up at Akashi. His hands are trembling, and it takes him every inch of his will not to turn his back on his defiance. "Because if I don't care, maybe nobody will."

"You _were_ human," Akashi says with a tinge of mockery. "Not anymore."

Something swells in Furihata's chest. Still, he has no idea what it is. He disguises it as a reciprocal of Akashi's anger for now. "Then what are you supposed to be? Seijuuro, if you're not human, what are you? _Who_ are you?"

"I am Akashi Seijuuro," Akashi declares, the moonlit sky casting darkness even on his eyes. "And I am this world's king. Kouki, do not return to this place ever again-I will make sure that you will never find it."

A cry rises in Furihata's throat, and he blurts, "But-"

"Good night, Kouki," Akashi murmurs in finality. Despite Furihata's pleas to hear him out, he snaps his fingers, the little noise breaking the world apart and forcing Furihata to the confines of his own room. His vision stops going in circles and he stops seeing red once he safely lands on his bed, his pillow perfectly nestled under the crook of his neck.

Furihata immediately sits up and stares at the window, the red curtains still swaying with the breeze he has brought with him.

Grinding his teeth, he buries his face in his hands. "Damn it."

.

.

**to be continued**

* * *

listen to akashi's song here: www()youtube()com/watch?v=t012ucY3v2w


	4. Chapter 4

some nijiaka in this chapter, for the sake of backstory.

* * *

for a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.

so collapse.

crumble.

this is not your destruction.

.

this is your birth.

* * *

**four**

**.**

**.**

He doesn't sleep for the rest of the week-not even a wink.

.

Furihata paces around his room, careful not to let his annoyance resonate in his footfalls. There's no timepiece in his room, leaving him unable to gauge if it is still evening or if another day has already taken over. Shadows follow him wherever he walks to as if guarding him.

He only stops in his reflection of what transpired earlier when the wall adjacent to the door opens up to a dark pit. There, Kuroko emerges, his eyes startlingly blue in the midst of it all. "Furihata-kun," Kuroko says flatly to indicate his acknowledgement. "It is a surprise to see you awake."

"Ah," Furihata scratches his head, suppressing the yawn that threatens to make its way out of his mouth. "I couldn't sleep. Are you bringing me a message?"

Kuroko nods. "Only a short one this time. Is something troubling you?"

Fervently shaking his head, Furihata says, "No, no. I just...uh, let's just get on with the message. I'd rather not waste your time."

"Very well," Kuroko says. His eyes are hooded, quietly yet keenly observing Furihata's reactions. As his fingers reach out to touch Furihata's forehead, Furihata involuntarily closes his eyes, having been used to being swallowed by the darkness and sent to a dimension that he could only travel to when he is unconscious. Furihata collects his bearings as the sunlight treads its way past his eyelids, gently awakening yet persistently piercing.

The setting he's been transported to is familiar from long ago, back when he had to worry about tests and cram school rather than think about where he would derive his and Suzume's means of surviving. He wasn't exactly placed in this classroom when he had the opportunity of education, but he recognizes the writings on the board. Algebra, Furihata muses. Not exactly his cup of tea, but even the academic rigor that he used to go through seems nostalgic when he thinks about it.

He is sitting on the last row, a girl with braided locks situated right before him. Even from this view, he knows that it's Suzume. The sounds of pencil scratching across papyrus is audible throughout the deserted classroom.

Curious, Furihata peers over Suzume's shoulder and squints at her tiny penmanship. It amuses him to this day that she hasn't changed, not even in the slightest bit.

The amusement spontaneously morphs into sadness when he sees what Suzume has been scribbling across her notebook.

_I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. _

_Nii-san, can you read this?_

_Please come back. _

The message ends as Suzume tears the page from her notebook and tosses it to the trash can, her hand placed over her lips to muffle her sobs. Furihata blinks back the prickling on his eyes and exhales shakily as he's pulled back into reality. As always, Kuroko watches him without a word, offering only his presence as condolence.

"I really can't reply," Furihata says more to himself than to Kuroko. He rubs circles on his temples to relieve the anguish that has been dormant inside of him.

Kuroko sits beside him on the floor, occupying as little space as possible. It's not too far-fetched with his small frame. "Many of us wish to, but the universe is just as it is, and nobody knows why."

"Sometimes, Kuroko," Furihata mumbles, "I wish things would've turned out more differently. I wonder why I'm here, when it seems as if I don't belong."

"It's natural for you to think that," Kuroko says. "You didn't die the way you were supposed to, but this world only welcomes its own. You are one of us as much as you think you are still one of those you left behind."

Furihata sniffs, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I hope so. Kuroko, do you-"

He turns toward his side only to see the empty space beside him. Sighing, he rises from the cold floor and heads to bed, where he lies wide awake, recounting every mistake he has ever regretted. His eyes soon flutter, the words _Good night, good night, good night, Kouki_ reverberating in his mind as one deafening echo.

With the sunlight streaming through the misty window, he falls asleep.

.

He's five seconds into his slumber when there's a rapping against his door.

.

.

His eyes are red-rimmed when he's invited to tea by a raven-haired lad, who animatedly introduces himself in spite of being up during the early hours of the morning. Midorima joins them soon after, huffing as he combs a hand through his hair.

"I'm Takao Kazunari, by the way!" the energetic male says, his face splitting into half due to a wide grin. The star and moon charms on his bracelets create a tingling sound. Furihata barely acknowledges him, only nodding with nothing but a lackadaisical expression.

Takao hums at the sight of Furihata, who nearly slumps to the table and drenches his face with the warm chamomile tea. "Hmm, you must have gotten a bad night's sleep. I wonder why I haven't been able to control that."

Furihata shakes his head, his peripheral vision blurring. His cup of tea remains untouched while Midorima sips on his own. The brunet mumbles, "I...don't understand what you're talking about."

"Or you mustn't have slept at all," Midorima comments as he puts his cup and saucer down, the china clinking with the glass table. "You should inform me if your inability to sleep persists. There are some sleeping draughts in the infirmary for you to freely use."

"I..." Furihata trails off, covering his mouth as he yawns. Takao folds his hands under his chin while waiting for the rest of his statement. "Why did you call me at such an...inconvenient time?"

At that, Takao laughs, although the sound is still not enough to wrench Furihata from his stupor. "Right, I forgot to tell you the order of business. If you didn't catch my name, which I'm assuming is exactly what happened with your reduced attention due to insomnia, I'm Takao, and I'm a Dream Weaver. Basically I intervene when nightmares fall upon the people of this world and turn those nightmares into dreams which are their exact opposite. Now that I think about it, the title should be 'Dream Changer' instead of 'Dream Weaver'. Shin-chan, what do you think?"

Furihata blinks and is surprised to note that it is indeed Midorima whom Takao has referred to. The healer pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and turns away. "It doesn't really matter, as it isn't what we're for."

"Yeah, I was just intending to provide a bit of background information," Takao smiles toothily, turning back to Furihata. The brunet rubs the weariness from his eyes and cracks his neck to stir himself awake. "Do you know why I became a Dream Weaver?"

"Takao," Midorima warns, his bandaged fingers tapping impatiently on glass. "Now is not the time."

The lad in question shrugs, saying, "Now is _definitely_ the right time, seeing as Furihata-kun here will only truly wake up and listen to me if he knows at least the most important part of my story. Funny, this isn't a bed-time story. What should we call it?"

Midorima sighs in exasperation and goes back to peacefully sipping his tea.

"Furihata-kun," Takao says, giggling at his small triumph, "I'm only telling you this because I can sense your curiosity. It's what got us in trouble in the first place." Furihata wrinkles his nose at the accusation and is about to inquire about it when Takao plows forward, his vivacity emanating from his bright eyes and lightening the atmosphere in the almost-empty dining hall.

Takao continues, "I know that you want to ask us questions about our deaths." _How did you-_Furihata stammers in his head, and his eyes widen. Takao expresses his satisfaction at the fact that he has Furihata's attention now. "There, I caught your interest. Well, mine is really bland, and every time I remember it it doesn't really hurt. I've come to accept it as more of a liberation from a life I never really wanted."

"I'm not...I don't want to intrude," Furihata says in caution, careful not to offend the Dream Weaver. "But why?"

"It's okay-I want to tell you this," Takao assures him, waving his worries off. "Anyway, I had terrible nightmares up until I was about sixteen. Sometimes I kept them to myself, but other times I would wake up screaming and running to my parents' room. It really embarrassed me to seek their presence, being the pubescent male that I was, all sure that the world was going to kneel before me because I was young and ambitious.

"The nightmares kept on progressing like a bad horror novel-never pick one up, by the way-and my parents started to become annoyed at the trouble I've caused them in the wee hours of the night. So they gave me sleeping pills-they'll help you sleep better, they said. They didn't understand that I _didn't_ want to sleep anymore."

Furihata doesn't understand where death came in in Takao's situation. As soon as his confusion is conceived, however, Takao clears it up. "My father was insistent. I'd tell him that the pills weren't eradicating the nightmares, that they were making them worse. I couldn't reason with him. It reached the point where he'd force me to take the pills, where he'd stuff them in my mouth himself. You should've seen my room-it was a classic scenario of overdose, with mountains of bottles whose caps were the confetti and whose labels were pieces of paper ignored."

It astonishes Furihata how good-natured Takao seems to be in spite of recounting his death. "Did it hurt?"

The clink of Midorima's cup against the saucer resounds across the hall, and Takao only chuckles. "Nope. The good thing about having a somewhat bad memory was that you could be happy in spite of the pain you supposedly had to endure."

Furihata exhales, tracing the handle of his cup. It is no longer warm.

Sometimes he doesn't want to listen to these kinds of stories anymore. His stomach lurches, threatening to skin itself raw-all because he's surrounded by people who never deserved the end that they got. Furihata doesn't look at Midorima in hopes that he wouldn't describe his death, too.

"Was I able to answer the million-dollar question?" Takao says, his tone carefree as always. He claps his hands in remembrance and adds, "Ah, let's get back to the priority. It's highly likely for you to ask this question of us, because you're the newest inhabitant of this world and nothing makes sense. You don't buy the fact that we simply exist here, that we weren't something you were familiar of before."

Discreetly, Furihata nods, now only deciding to drink his tea. He winces as it traces a cold path down his throat.

"The problem is that you asked the wrong person," Takao says.

Furihata's jaw unhinges. "...Who? Se...Seijuuro?"

The first name basis makes Takao blink and laugh. However, he does nod to affirm. "It seems as if Akashi still can't come to terms with his own death. Nobody has had the audacity to ask about it, with the exception of yourself. I wouldn't exactly call you out on your straightforwardness, but now it's done more harm than good."

Aghast, Furihata says, "What happened?"

"Well," Takao says, rolling his shoulders backward. "He's trapped in a nightmare about his past, and I tried everything I could to pull him out of it. He wouldn't wake up. I've asked Momoi to visit him there-not physically, of course, since she knows what happened to him anyway-but she declined. The rest of us don't want to find out what's in there."

"Are you asking _me_ to do it?"

"Obviously," Takao answers readily. "You want to find out, don't you? This is your chance, Furihata."

Furihata slumps back on his seat, pale-faced. It's one thing to hear stories about people's murders, but to witness it directly, the memory as fresh as a daisy-it's entirely different. He also can't bear the idea of being in somebody's _head,_ for crying out loud. Besides, the rest of them are far more familiar with the mechanics of venturing into the depths of someone's mind and using magic if necessary.

In his hesitation, Takao knows what Furihata truly feels about the situation. "I don't want to force you into doing this, because...you know how it was like for us when our lives were ended early. We didn't have any choice. But you-you _do_ have a choice, and you're something that we aren't."

Furihata's eyes ask silently, and Takao says, "You're brave."

The only audible sound at that moment is Furihata's heartbeat.

Disrupting the atmosphere, Midorima presses, "We don't have much time. Once the other residents find out what happened to Akashi, they'll panic and the event would trigger their own memories. There may be people who, like Akashi, still bear the burden of their previous lives."

"You really shouldn't ask me to do this," Furihata says helplessly, wanting to help but unable to do so. "Seijuuro didn't want me to know. He would've told me already if he did."

"That's funny," notes Takao, who repeatedly clasps and unclasps his hands. His irises have changed colors-darkened, even. "In his nightmare, I could hear the reverberations of his consciousness. Somewhere in his memory he's standing and waiting. At first, the only one I could hear out of the voices was yours, asking him how he died. We are asking _you_ to meet Akashi in his dream because I also heard another voice. His."

Furihata's hands tremble on the armrests so he places them both under his legs. "What...what did he say?"

Takao's trance-like state ends, and he smiles-not cheerfully nor playfully, but softly. "He said, 'this is my answer.'"

.

.

.

Before he's plunged into Akashi's memory, Takao tells him that he'd find himself in nineteenth-century Europe (the name rings a bell but isn't that recognizable to him-he must have read it somewhere). It's raining when Furihata gets there, the pitter-patter against the cobblestone paths tickling to the ear. Furihata is surprised when he feels the material of the cravat against his neck and subsequently looks down at himself to see what he's clothed with.

Somebody shouts behind him and he turns just in time to see a vehicle pulled by a horse-_omnibus service,_ a whisper brushes the shell of his ear. Furihata doesn't waste any time diving to the side, and when he doesn't make it, he closes his eyes in anticipation of the crunching of his bones.

It doesn't come at all.

To his astonishment, the vehicle just passes by him, one of the passengers still screaming with what appears to be excitement. Furihata wrinkles his nose at the oddity and tries entering a building without using the door. He yelps when he goes right through the wall like he is nothing but something at the same time. He also notices that he isn't wet from the rain at all.

Furihata looks around his surroundings, smoke rising to the sky and merchants and craftsmen hustling on the streets. They speak in varying dialects, each one more foreign than the last, but when Furihata concentrates on listening he realizes that he can understand all of them perfectly. Must be Takao's doing, then.

He starts walking, desperate to find any signs and, if possible, anything that would lead him to Akashi. It doesn't bug him when people pass through him, like the ghost he is in a memory that will never happen again. People dash to the inside of shops to wait until the downpour ceases, but he continues to run, footsteps resounding as slaps against the water on the ground. The logos stamped above the doors to the shops tell him that he's in a city called Paris.

Furihata then realizes it all-he's in a forgotten city in a year whose records have gone missing due to its being too far back in a past, and he's supposed to find someone whom he doesn't know about that much.

There's a whine rising in the pit of his throat.

Wandering around the vicinity for what seems to be a whole rainy afternoon, Furihata swallows the unmistakable feeling of being lost even with a sense of purpose. He wonders why Akashi has to make it this difficult for him to learn of his death, but then again, he's the one who started this situation, and he wants to be the one to end it.

He finally comes across a large courtyard, dumbfounded by the number of people in business suits and with top hats getting off their carriages. They're all silent, grim expressions painting their faces. Most of them appear to be middle-aged, judging from their perfect postures, the lines that adorn their foreheads, and the quiet determination that disguises itself as the steely look in their eyes.

But then Furihata sees a boy, seeming to be no more than seventeen years old.

He runs after him, breathless and crazed and sorry for plunging him back where he doesn't want to be. He's so young, so innocent-the brightness of his scarlet hair making him stand out in a sea of upperclassmen. Even then, Akashi has been outstanding and prominent that it doesn't really surprise Furihata any more.

But his age...he should have been given more time to live his life.

Furihata is nearing Akashi, fingertips reaching for his shoulder, but Akashi's voice-the one that he knows very well-echoes in his head.

_Not yet, Kouki._

He stops in the middle of his tracks and looks down on his hands.

They're vanishing.

.

The last thing he sees before he's thrust into another vignette of Akashi's life is the human Akashi used to be. The Akashi in this recollection turns around, graceful without trying, and looks right into Furihata's disappearing form.

Furihata blinks as the wind circles him.

He catches a glimpse of red.

Nothing of gold.

.

.

.

Furihata pants, the cold gust of air having stolen his breath away from him while sending him to another place, another time. In this memory, he's in a garden of some sort, with roses in bloom and their thorns threatening to lacerate everything in their way. He hears the clinking of teacups and small conversations.

There Akashi is, poised and impeccable as he is, as he should be. He lowers his gaze while sipping from his cup, listening to a raven-haired lad. Furihata realizes that here, he isn't able to move, as if being one of the flowers that can only let themselves be adored from afar.

"I should get going, Nijimura-san," Akashi murmurs, his tone clipped. He places his cup back on its saucer and dusts something invisible off of his clothing.

Nijimura, his companion, laughs and waves Akashi off. "We're not in Japan anymore. Drop the suffix, Akashi."

Akashi purses his lips stiffly. "Duly noted. But I must go, Nijimura. Father has appointed me to visit a prospective wife."

_Wife?_ Furihata wonders in awe, every bit stunned that Akashi would be marrying at such a young age. Akashi rises from his seat and looks at Nijimura expectantly, as if waiting for a said goodbye. From this distance, Furihata isn't certain if there's something holding Akashi back-his crimson eyes don't have as much luster as Furihata would have anticipated.

Sighing, Nijimura also stands up and puts the chair back in place, leaving his cup of tea untouched. "I suppose I should be leaving, too. I was just reminded that I have an appointment with our family's tailor. I'll tell you this: arranged marriages consume your time and life, so while you aren't in any kind of engagement yet you should make the most of what you still have."

Akashi crosses his eyebrows. "Wouldn't it be better if I am to gear myself for married life by devoting my time to such preparations?"

"Trust me," Nijimura says, and Akashi's eyes soften at the statement. "Don't do anything you would regret later on, Akashi. It's one thing to have obligations and to fulfill what society expects of you, but sometimes you have to let life happen to you."

Akashi keeps his silence, observing Nijimura as if evaluating his honesty, and says, "I'll remember that."

Nijimura doesn't end up saying his farewell when Akashi leaves first, heading toward Furihata's direction. Furihata instinctively tries to hide behind the trimmed bushes but remembers that he is not capable of movement. He opens his mouth to gather as much air as he can before he holds his breath.

Akashi trudges by him, motions too precise and controlled, as if he is dancing under a puppeteer's hand. Furihata thoroughly looks at him and at his hands, balled in his pockets. Akashi's expression is hard, as if he does not want to wed under his Father's orders, and lonely, as if he wants Nijimura to stop him from doing so.

In the opposite direction, Nijimura walks away.

.

.

.

The scene fades slowly, the darkness closing in on an immobile Furihata and the light claiming him once again. This time, he's in a house with all the curtains drawn and a lone violin playing downstairs. Furihata is standing beside large double doors when they open to reveal Akashi, who bows immediately following his entrance.

"Father."

Furihata turns to look at the man behind a desk, looking up from the stack of papers in front of him. Akashi's father sets his quill pen down-something tells Furihata that the writing instrument is used more out of tradition rather than necessity. He presumes that he's right when he sees a set of steel nibs on the corner of the desk.

Akashi's father adjusts his spectacles accordingly. "Seijuuro," he says, composed voice reverberating in the spacious room. "Have you gone to see the Duchess?"

"Yes," Akashi replies tersely at first. When his father looks at him, not blinking for more than five seconds, he continues, "I've conversed with her parents, and they informed me that she's...rebelling. Her parents are currently investigating about her behavior, and they're convinced that she has a lover among the peasants."

"Tell them that you will not be pursuing this commitment," his father says. Akashi's eyes widen when the man elaborates. "Of course, be delicate. You know what you should say."

"That I have their best interests, and I will maintain their friendship," Akashi casts his eyes down.

"Good," his father says, tone unchanging. "Seijuuro, I also wanted to talk to you about a letter I had you write."

Furihata sucks in a sharp breath as only he notices that Akashi swallows, his facade unwavering. "What is it, Father?"

Akashi's father clasps his hands under his chin. "It's clear that your grasp on French is mediocre at best. In spite of having been given full marks by your tutor, you will have to attend more sessions. You are an Akashi. Anything below exceptional is unacceptable, and if this persists, you will certainly have to abandon your name. I cannot bear to think that someone undistinguished could be a part of my family and be the stain that ruins it."

Furihata gasps, cupping a hand over his mouth to muffle his disbelief at the fact that Akashi's father would readily disown the boy if necessary. Akashi, on the other hand, maintains a neutral expression. "Understood, Father."

His father takes one last look at him before he picks his pen up and resumes writing. "Very well then," he says, his eyes concentrated on the papyrus. "You may go, Seijuuro. Do not disappoint me."

Akashi doesn't say anything. He bows and exits, as light-footed as ever.

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Of all things, Furihata does not wish to feel pity for Akashi Seijuuro because he does not deserve any, and it would be safe to assume that he wants none. While the wind whirls around and carries him, however, all he can see is Akashi suppressing any of his emotions, cramming all of them into a chest whose key he has already thrown away. He sees a boy, a young boy, burdened with the weight that could crush his sanity and his heart-but if Furihata says that out loud, Akashi would deny having a heart at all.

Seeing Akashi's submission only makes Furihata flinch with unease. He doesn't have any idea how Akashi can manage keeping it all inside without ever getting tired of doing so.

Akashi is in the garden again-this time, he's taking a stroll with Nijimura, who pockets his hands and sighs. "I'm exhausted from having been measured countless times. The prospect of running away from my responsibilities is too tantalizing to ignore."

"Nothing should distract you from duty," Akashi says listlessly. "Shame is much more atrocious than being bound to your obligations."

"I know that, Akashi," Nijimura takes his left hand out to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I know it very well. I've been playing this game longer than you have." Akashi, who plucks a red rose from a nearby bush, barely registers any pain when one of the thorns prick his finger.

When Akashi stops to throw the rose away, Nijimura notices the spot of incarnadine on his skin, also halting his footsteps. Akashi looks at Nijimura, his eyes challenging. "The number of years that you've been abiding by the rules is not equivalent to how willing you are to actually abide by the rules."

At that, Nijimura chuckles, shaking his head at the answer that he should have expected from Akashi. He takes Akashi's hand and brings his finger to his lips, lightly swiping his tongue over the small wound.

Akashi raises his eyebrow in question, but Furihata can see through him-he knows that Akashi does not disapprove of Nijimura's action. While Furihata reddens at the intimate gesture, Akashi lies and says, "That's unsanitary, Nijimura."

Nijimura lets his hand go. "Yet you didn't retract your hand the moment you knew that I was going to do it."

Akashi does not reply, his stare fiery but hollow. After staring back for a few minutes, Nijimura bends to pick up the discarded rose, holding its stem carefully as if it is the one to bleed. He twists it in his hand, examining the deep color of the petals. "Do you know this rose's meaning, Akashi?"

Akashi only scoffs. "Of course. It is expected of me to know the language of flowers for courting purposes."

"I wonder if you know something only you have ever wanted to learn about," Nijimura says, smiling. "Tell me its meaning, then."

Still unnoticed, Furihata bites his lip, guilty that he is witnessing a secret that Akashi ought to have kept to himself. He's not sure why he knows this in spite of not having been romantically involved with anyone-but Nijimura gives himself away in his words and actions. One question that lingers in his mind, however, is one regarding the reason behind the catchflies.

Was Nijimura the one who gave them to Akashi?

"Passionate love," Akashi responds easily, bearing no inhibition about the matter. Furihata slowly inhales, knowing where this is heading to.

Nijimura hands him the rose. "Well said, like every other statement you've been forced to memorize for the sake of amity with wealthy strangers and assurance that the reputation your predecessors built would not crumble."

Furihata's surprised when Akashi does not feign taciturnity. In fact, Furihata discerns the rage behind Akashi's tone. "I beg your pardon?"

"Live your life, Akashi," Nijimura says, placing the rose in Akashi's grasp when the redhead does not take it. "Feel what you want to feel, and say what you really mean. You can't act like a marionette for all eternity."

"Not this life," Akashi mumbles. He tightens his hold on the rose, dismissing the poking thorns. "This is not my life to live."

"There is always a choice," says Nijimura. He walks over to the spot directly in front of Akashi and places his hands on the latter's shoulders. His grip is firm, making Akashi wince a little, but Nijimura smiles, only for Akashi, and every noise in the distance becomes even more of gibberish as Akashi looks up at the other lad. "There is always _your_ choice, and it matters just as much as your father's does."

Something catches in Furihata's throat when Nijimura leans in and closes his eyes, not bothering to ask permission because he knows that Akashi would allow him, anyway. Akashi's fingers find the lapel of Nijimura's suit, and he clings to him as if he is his lifeline. Out of courtesy, Furihata looks away, thinking that he is not worth showing this to.

He isn't worthy of seeing Akashi unveil whom he truly is, not at all.

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The transition to the other significant events in Akashi's life is blindingly fast, as if Furihata is skimming Momoi's notebook and gleaning only glimpses of the content. He witnesses a kiss, another kiss, a shy one, a short peck, a kiss that stops time, a kiss that spans the rest of time, a kiss that ends too quickly-and all of the kisses are driven by something pure yet powerful. They are in secret, but most of all, they are out of love.

Furihata sees Akashi at his most vulnerable, buried in warm sheets beside someone who doesn't control him and treats him as a person rather than a machine that's flawless and set out to use whatever means to achieve victory.

It makes him cry, makes him bury his face in his hands and surround himself with darkness while he's trembling with sobs wracking his chest-because he knows that one day Akashi will lose all of this, and he doesn't need to know why it's going to happen to gauge just how much hurt would weigh itself down on Akashi.

Tonight, Nijimura does not kiss Akashi like he usually does during their clandestine meetings. Akashi notices this quickly; after all, he knows how to see right through people. But he doesn't ask, and Furihata, who sits in the shadows as he watches Akashi's life progress, almost pleads for him to ask right there and then.

It isn't until Nijimura sets his cravat on the bedside table that Akashi opens his mouth. It's too late, as Nijimura beats him to it.

"In another world, we will have duties, but they're the ones that won't prevent us from seeing each other," Nijimura says softly, testing each word on his tongue. "This world will never let us have anything we want."

Akashi exhales, knowing very well that something bad is impending. "Nijimura, I prefer direct statements. You know that."

Nijimura rubs his temples. He's only a young man himself, but he appears weary, perhaps far more than those who have lived long enough to have seen people take charge of others' fates. "The wedding is due to take place in a month."

"A month left," Akashi murmurs, scarlet eyes flickering in the haze of the lamplight.

"No," Nijimura says, his gaze determined. "It doesn't have to be that way. There's the idea of elopement, and-"

Akashi's expression has soured. "Nijimura, you and I both know that this has been coming for a long time now."

Astounded, Nijimura stands up from the cot and presses, "Have you forgotten what I said about choices? How you're able to make your own if you allow yourself to? Or have you turned your back on all of those for the sake of your pride and standing?"

"You said it yourself," Akashi says with no hint of emotion. "We cannot get what we want, and we cannot make a choice if that choice has already been set in stone for us."

"Akashi," Nijimura calls out, his voice hoarse with desperation. "This isn't...this isn't something that the Akashi Seijuuro I know would say."

Before Akashi can rebut, Nijimura clears his throat and adds, "But you're right, in the end. You've always been absolutely, damnably right-sometimes it infuriates me. Neither of us can forsake our duties. It's not just us-this is not all about us. But know that had we not been in this lifetime, I would've fought for you."

Furihata brings his fingers to his quivering lips, willing them to stop. It's impossible for Akashi not to feel even a twinge of anger, for Nijimura giving up so easily, or of pain, for not having been worth the struggle and the running away.

Akashi straightens himself, forcing back the prickling on his eyes. "Know that I would have done the same." He holds his hand out, all affection lost from his touch, but instead of shaking it Nijimura pulls him to his chest and embraces him.

"I know you're strong and you can fend off for yourself," he whispers, his hand on the back of Akashi's neck. "I believe in you."

What Akashi wants to hear from him is, _I'm here for you,_ but it never comes-the only thing that washes over him like an ebbing tide at first is the realization that he has always been alone, that even Nijimura has trusted him to sort this out independently. The epiphany then comes crashing and raging inside of him, tearing and burning and destroying and clawing at him like the evil thing that it is.

In spite of that, Akashi doesn't wind his arms around Nijimura's waist in return.

He doesn't let himself cry, either.

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The setting changes to that of a church, all bells tolling in time for a wedding. The ceremony spans many hours, but the vows are the only things that Akashi pays attention to. He doesn't have to describe Nijimura and his bride-he doesn't know the woman well, aside from the fact that she is the heiress to many lands just south of Paris. Besides, if he tries to tell something about Nijimura, it would have to be about him-and-her, because he and his wife are eternally bound by hollow promises that everybody expects them to fulfill.

To be fair, Nijimura hasn't promised Akashi anything. They're both realists in a world where utility is valued over desire, and it relieves him a bit that Nijimura didn't do more to let him down.

The flowers in Nijimura's wedding are catchflies, red and pristine in a place where nothing of such purity exists anymore. When the rites are over, Akashi stays behind, his fingers tracing the petals of one catchfly. Furihata is sitting primly, observing as Akashi recounts what it means-_youthful love-_until Akashi blinks, surprised, at one hidden catchfly, its color different from the rest.

It's white.

Akashi plucks it from the arrangement and examines it, laughing bitterly at how unsuspecting the other attendees had been. He takes the white catchfly and retrieves a red one, placing them both in his breast pocket. Furihata watches him silently, noting the falter in Akashi's steps as he walks out of the church and into the sun. Furihata clasps his hands on his lap, his eyes far too heavy for him to have them open for a long time.

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The last of the recollections is in the room where Akashi gets stripped down to what he is: an entity created for the sole purpose of carrying traditions over generations and expanding the prominence of the Akashi household. Furihata winces, unable to do anything more than that, when Akashi's father rises from his seat, the shadows framing his stern look.

"It has come to my attention that you had trysts with Nijimura Shuuzo in the past," he says, voice as cold as the room.

Akashi doesn't respond-he only bows his head to look at his feet.

His father continues in spite of the clamor outside their home. "Haven't I always taught you to weigh the consequences of your actions? If people find out about your disgusting dalliance, you will be condemned. Bear in mind that you still carry my name."

"That was a mistake on my part, Father," Akashi says, his voice not breaking-not even once. "I apologize. It was a brief affair, and it will never happen again."

"No, it won't," his father responds, his eyes narrowed. "My new wife will be giving birth to a child soon."

Akashi stills in his breathing. How had he not noticed?

His father says, "She will be giving birth to my son, one whom I will make sure won't fail me. You are not necessary to the Akashi family's goal of securing victory, Seijuuro."

Akashi's eyes widen. Furihata's own do, too, both at the insinuation in the statement and the first show of emotion that Akashi has ever had in front of his father. "Father-"

"This is what you wanted, Seijuuro," his father says firmly. "You are relieved of all of your duties, but you are no longer an Akashi."

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Furihata's teeth chatter when the chilly wind blows right on his face, and he opens his eyes to the sight of gray skies. He gasps when he finds that he's standing on the railings of a bridge that's hundreds of feet above a commercial river.

Beside him, Akashi is looking up, blinking back something that he can't afford to let go of. His hands hang by his side uselessly.

Furihata inhales sharply as he begins to see how Akashi truly died. He tries reaching out to hold Akashi back, to stop him from wasting his life when he could've done so much more, but he is once again rendered immobile.

Akashi closes his eyes solemnly and murmurs, "There is a choice."

He remains oblivious to Furihata, who begins thrashing to escape from his invisible bondage. Furihata starts pleading, shouting, "Seijuuro, please don't do this-don't, please-"

He's well aware that it won't change anything, because he's only in a memory that has already been done. He doesn't want to see Akashi's death, having witnessed Akashi die several times at the hands of people who could have chosen differently. Akashi breathes in for the last time before he spreads his arms and falls.

Furihata screams, the sound raw in his throat, and he's able to move too late. By the time he reaches for Akashi, the water resounds with a hard splash. He chokes on air even if keeps him alive, and the string of ragged murmurs that he emits consists of nothing but _no, Seijuuro, no no nono**no**._

He's still catching his breath when he gets transported to a more familiar place-to the cliff where Akashi sits alone, fiddling with catchflies while hanging his feet above the raging waters. Furihata is crying, hiding his face behind his hand, in spite of the memories being over.

Akashi says, his eyes closed, "I hope that you understand now."

"I'm sorry, Sei-" Furihata hiccups, shaking his head to steer clear of all that plagues his eyes. He doesn't want to call out the name that Akashi's father used millennia ago. "I'm sorry-I'm really sorry."

"It's not your fault," Akashi replies, his tone as light as the breeze. He is still sitting away from where Furihata is.

He lets Furihata settle down for a while, the latter's eyes already puffy and sore. Furihata doesn't dare stare at him when he knows that Akashi has never been the same again, and that they are, indeed, the same regarding the choice they had to make.

Furihata jolts when flashes of light appear in his peripheral vision. He raises his chin to stare at the moonless sky, and he opens his mouth in awe at three meteors simultaneously streaking the sky with momentary brightness. As soon as they fade away, Akashi exhales, and Furihata gathers the courage to look at him.

He finds gold in place of red. "Kouki, we are different because it is us who ultimately ended ourselves, regardless of what drove us to do it. We are also different because while others attain one thing they have desired the most, we are given three."

"Three?" Furihata repeats, his voice still strained from all that he had seen earlier.

Akashi nods, standing up from his position and striding over to where Furihata is. His eyes silently ask for permission, and Furihata acknowledges by shifting to the side to accommodate Akashi. It's surreal to converse with Akashi like this only moments after he had fallen right before Furihata's eyes, and somehow it relieves Furihata that this is the now, that this is what's real.

The smaller distance between them makes it possible for Furihata to concentrate only on Akashi's eyes. "Kouki, my first wish was to be absolute-to be able to write my own destiny without any interference. So I became king."

Furihata bites his lip, not knowing why Akashi is eager to tell him all of this.

"My second wish," Akashi proceeds, stepping back, "was something related to my fall."

There's a shuffling noise behind Akashi, and Furihata gasps as something protrudes from his back-something white and that which glistens even if it is only under the starlight. It extends far away from Akashi, fluttering proudly.

Akashi smiles sadly. "I wanted wings that could save me."

The obstruction in Furihata's throat pierces him again from within, but Furihata chooses to step forward and to reach out, tracing the outline of Akashi's wings. He caresses the feathers, the texture feeling like home, and breathes, "They're beautiful." Under his touch, Akashi's wings stir slightly.

"Why are you showing me these, Sei?" Furihata meekly asks, still admiring the span of Akashi's wings. "Why, if you didn't want to remember? Why me, of all people?"

Akashi doesn't answer him immediately, but eventually he says, "Because you're the only one who asked. And I wanted to see all of this again. It's hard to remember something you desperately wanted to forget, but the past would eventually catch up to me, someday."

Withdrawing his hand, Furihata faces Akashi completely-this is the Akashi Seijuuro who has bared himself, who didn't want anything to do with humans because they were fragile with their emotions, foolish with their decisions, and cruel with their convictions.

"People fall in love with mysteries, Kouki," Akashi murmurs quietly. "I doubt that you'd want that to happen to you, so I am letting you see what you have to see now."

Furihata doesn't comprehend it at first, but he senses warmth marauding his face when he finally does. He's about to ask Akashi what the last thing he wants the most is; Akashi interrupts, his wings folding back on themselves. "We are out of time."

"What's happening?" Furihata blurts, looking around his surroundings to see that the sky and the ground are crumbling. He flinches when a crack appears under his foot, and he steps aside to avoid falling through.

"Don't resist the collapse, Kouki," Akashi tells him, holding his palm out. Furihata takes his hand and clings onto it tightly. "I am simply waking up."

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Furihata gasps as he's brought back to reality, his vision a white-out from the lights directly above him. Silhouettes, which he assumes to belong to Midorima and Takao, loom over him, and he blinks to acclimate to his surroundings. He tries to move around, his bones brittle and his movement sluggish.

The room is cold, but the hand in his is warm.

Akashi stirs shortly after, small puffs of air escaping his lips. The first thing he does is swivel his head to look at Furihata, and he sighs once he has assured that the brunet is safe beside him.

"Two days," Midorima says, dissipating the image of a clock that he has recently conjured. He strides over to help Akashi up while Takao does the same to Furihata. Akashi loosens his grip on Furihata's hand and completely disentangles their fingers.

Furihata winces, placing a palm over his forehead. He croaks, "That...long?"

"Shintarou. Kazunari." Akashi motions for Midorima to let him go as he tries to maintain his balance by himself. "Thank you for your assistance."

Takao shakes his head, chuckling. "Akashi, you look terrible."

"So I've presumed," Akashi says, flexing his fingers behind his back. Furihata looks at him, and there appear to be dark circles under his eyes although he has just woken up. His trimmed hair is mussed from lying down for far too long. "Has everything remained fine in my absence?"

Crossing his arms over his chest, Midorima responds, "It's a miracle that nobody questioned your disappearance from conventions of the Court."

"There are no miracles, Shintarou," Akashi tells him. Instinctively, his eyes dart toward Furihata's direction. "Kouki, are you fine?"

Furihata's face is flushed when he answers, his hands tingling with the lasting impression of Akashi's. "Yes, Sei."

If the nickname surprises them, Midorima and Takao do not show their astonishment, especially not in front of Akashi. Takao clears his throat and chuckles to slightly alter the atmosphere. He pats Furihata's back. "Well, I'll get going if the matter's resolved. Thanks again, Furihata. You saved us there."

Furihata bows quickly. "I didn't do anything significant, but you're welcome, Takao-kun."

Midorima doesn't voice his gratitude, but he meets Furihata's gaze and nods. Both Takao and Midorima exit the room with silence remaining in their wake. Akashi, on the other hand, follows their footsteps only after minutes of reorienting himself. There's a slight waver to his movement, like he is about to succumb to fatigue.

When he does stumble on his next step, Furihata is there to catch him, his arms hooked under Akashi's. Akashi blinks as Furihata catches his breath, staring Akashi in the eyes by mistake. The moment he does so, he straightens himself and holds Akashi properly, keeping the distance between their faces.

"Sei," Furihata says first, withdrawing his hands to place them on Akashi's shoulders. "Rest first. That...that dream must have taken a toll on you."

Evaluating him, Akashi says, "I promised to find your parents. It is only fair for me never to break my promises."

Furihata shakes his head, quelling his overhwhelming desire to see his parents again. "We'll do that later. For now, recover. It was my fault that you've been stuck in your memories, and I don't want to burden you even more."

"You were a bystander," Akashi says resolutely, carefully prying Furihata's hands off of him. "Not the wrongdoer. Besides, it is the last of the three wishes you are granted. You might as well find the last key of your happiness as soon as you can."

The brunet barely registers the words when he knits his eyebrows, replaying Akashi's previous statement to make sure that he has heard it correctly. "The last? But I've only...achieved one."

Akashi exhales, his face contorting to a frown as he pinches the bridge of his nose. He snaps his fingers while he's at it, summoning a glass of water from thin air. Furihata doesn't widen his eyes as Akashi grabs the floating glass and puts it to his lips. When Akashi finishes, he coughs and says, "Excuse me for that. But yes, the last. The first was your bravery. The second was escape from responsibility."

Something bitter finds its way on Furihata's tongue as he silently denies Akashi's assumption about his second desire, but the more that he thinks about it, he realizes that it is true.

"Naturally," Akashi resumes, his face having gained color again, "the last would be a reunion with your parents. I would say that we shouldn't postpone that. All inhabitants of this world have achieved what they wanted, so it should be the same for you."

"To be honest, I don't really think that I'm brave," says Furihata, who clenches and unclenches his fists. "I don't _feel_ brave. Maybe that's not what I wanted, in the first place."

Akashi stares at him. "I don't think you understand, Kouki. The main reason why it's easy to see right through you is the fact that you're not afraid to bare it all. You cry when you need to, you smile when you can, and you ask questions when everybody else is hesitant to do so. You don't follow take precautions like Shintarou does, yet you don't take huge risks as Daiki is fond of doing. You're reckless-no, the term is 'brave'. You're brave in your own way."

Akashi's voice is distant, as if he is forcing himself to act like he is not concerned with the matter. In spite of that, Furihata reddens after hearing Akashi say all those things about him. It isn't that he has to look to Akashi for the validation of his actions and the confirmation of his identity, but to hear those words uttered to him for the first time...he can't discern what's monopolizing his chest, but he figures that it might not be something important, after all.

Furihata takes his turn to speak after letting it all sink in. "Sei...what about you? I never got to hear your last desire."

"It doesn't matter," Akashi says, gazing into the unfathomable distance beyond the window. "I haven't found it in the time that I have been here, and I doubt that I ever will."

Furihata purses his lips, noting that Akashi hasn't answered him directly. After a while, he says, "But what is it?"

Stubbornly, Akashi replies, "I don't know."

Uncertain if he should press further, Furihata stares at his feet. Neither of them move in the time that passes, but when the quiet becomes deafening, Furihata walks towards the door, his hand grasping the knob. He only holds it, not twisting it, before he whirls around and says, "You don't have to be afraid, Sei. I...I can't say that I understand how you felt when you were in another world-when you were alive-but I will always be here, if you need to talk to somebody. If you need someone to just listen."

He's met with silence, Akashi still looking at him as if the room is empty. Furihata is about to take his leave when he hears footsteps, ever so light.

Akashi walks to him and touches his hand, gently pulling it to reveal his palm. Furihata opens his mouth, stunned, and Akashi places the two catchflies, red and white, in his grasp.

"Keep these for me, Kouki," Akashi murmurs sedately. "I will tell you what it is that I've never found once I ask you to give these flowers back. Until then, you have to keep these safe."

The trust in Akashi's voice also resonates in his eyes, and Furihata swallows, the task too large for him and his self-worth much less than what Akashi sees in him for him to be entrusted with things that Akashi has treasured throughout the millennia.

Furihata caresses the petals with his thumb and returns Akashi's gaze, his face splitting into a smile. "I will. I promise."

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**to be continued**

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i loved writing this chapter the most xx

quote from the lovely nhixxie on tumblr.


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